The Older Persons Poverty Monitor

The NZ Council of Christian Social Services’ Older Persons Poverty Monitor provides an important national picture of poverty and hardship among older people, using indicators across five domains: income, essentials, housing, connection and health.

The Monitor shows significant disparities by ethnicity and gender. Māori and Pacific older people experience disproportionately high levels of poverty and hardship, while women experience greater hardship than men across all 10 indicators.

For example, 18.5% of Māori aged 65 and over experience relative income poverty after housing costs, compared with 11.32% of European older people. Women also experience higher levels of hardship across all 10 measures.

These findings reinforce the importance of looking beyond single dimensions of inequality. While the Monitor provides valuable data on ethnicity, gender, age and region, the published indicators do not currently provide the cross-tabulated data needed to see how these factors intersect - for example, the experiences of older Māori women.

This is an important area for further research and highlights the value of a Tiriti-centred, gender-disaggregated approach to data. Understanding how ethnicity, gender, age, housing and income intersect can help build a more complete picture of the experiences of wāhine Māori and other groups facing compounded disadvantage.

The Monitor also acknowledges that defining older people as 65+ can be problematic for Māori and Pacific peoples, and includes a supplementary report examining people aged 50–64. This is an important step towards understanding the different ways ageing, poverty and hardship are experienced across communities.

For CEWH, the Monitor provides a valuable baseline, and strengthens the case for continuing to develop data that can reveal the intersections of gender, ethnicity, housing and other forms of inequality.