Almost 40% of those departing NZ long-term are aged 18 to 30. What sort of country will they leave behind, asks Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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Young people leading the charge out the door
Last year saw the highest net loss of New Zealanders in a calendar year, according to provisional figures released by Stats NZ. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, reports the Herald’s Liam Dann (paywalled), with those aged 18 to 30 making up 38% of long-term departures. The age group with the highest loss was 25-year-olds, with nearly 2,900 citizens that age (out of a total 72,000) leaving the country long-term.
Overall, net migration fell sharply in 2024, with fewer arrivals and record-high departures. While better numbers in December suggest the dropoff may be stabilising, Westpac senior economist Michael Gordon cautions against reading too much into the recent change. “Many migrants return home to visit their families at this time of year, and it’s harder than usual to distinguish between short-term and permanent movements.”
Why the young brain drain is such a worry
In discussions about how the youth exodus will affect New Zealand’s future, the most common talking point is its impact on our tax base. The loss of so many people at the start of their working lives is only going to exacerbate the issues posed by our aging population, notes RNZ’s Susan Edmunds in an article from October last year. According to Dominick Stephens, chief economic adviser at Treasury, in the 1960s there were seven people aged 15 to 64 for every person aged 65 and over. Now, there are four and in 50 years there will be about two.
That’s a recipe for demographic and economic disaster, economist Shamubeel Eaqub tells Edmunds. “Because of the aging population, declining fertility, the current setup is a Ponzi scheme relying entirely on people aged 30 to 60 to pay tax to pay for all the promises made to everyone.”
The problem is so large that simply tinkering with the immigration settings – or encouraging young people to stay in New Zealand – won’t be enough to fix it. Still, we have to try, and not just for the sake of our tax take, Eaqub says. Having younger people around is what drives the energy of a place, in society as well as the economy. “You’ve got to have a decent portion of people who are young and active and doing things, living life.”
Fertility rates on the slide too
As concerning as falls in net migration is the long-term decline in fertility rates. New Zealand’s crude birth rate fell to a record low of 11 births per 1,000 population in the year to March 2024, writes Nick Brundson at Infometrics. For comparison, the rate per thousand was 27 at its peak in 1962 and 15 in 2009. The trend line is clear.
Brundson’s entire article exploring the trends in NZ fertility and what’s driving them is well worth a read, but this section sums up the problem pretty well: “A more nuanced measure is the total fertility rate – the average number of children that a woman of childbearing age (15-44 years) can expect to have through their reproductive years. A total fertility rate of 2.1 is regarded as the minimum replacement level for a developed country – 2.0 to replace the parents, and 0.1 to offset mortality before childbearing age.
“New Zealand’s total fertility rate was last above 2.1 in 2011, falling sharply since to a record low of just 1.52 in the year to March 2024. Putting this rate into perspective, it is well below Stats NZ’s median projection for total fertility of 1.65 for the 2024 to 2028 period. In other words, we expected fertility to ease, but it’s worse than expected.”