TopSpots: New Zealand's Best Places for Families
International studies on best places for families often start off by looking at the relative availability of parks, playgrounds and coastline. In New Zealand we are fortunate that just about wherever families live, they have fairly easy access to green spaces, beaches, forests and the great outdoors; so for the purpose of this report we decided to dig deeper and uncover other criteria which is influential in determining great places for families to live.
The best places for families are those that are good for children and their parents. We took into account diverse factors that affect mum, dad and the kids and analysed our 50 largest territorial authorities against them to see how they performed.
Families like to be close to other families, so we looked at districts and cities that have a preponderance of under 15-year olds. We also scored them for low unemployment rates, housing affordability in relation to income levels and identified those places with the lowest deprivation levels.
We awarded additional points to those areas covered by District Health Boards with strong neonatal health records and high numbers of GPs per capita.
Safety is of paramount importance to families so we also studied crime rates and youth apprehension levels.
Then we looked at education. We considered the rates of school leavers with NCEA level one or above; those that qualified to attend university and those with little or no formal attainment. We also compared truancy statistics from across the country.
Children emulate and are influenced by the people around them, so finally, we analysed the educational achievements of residents and awarded points to those places that have higher proportions of adults that graduated with a degree or higher qualification.
The points were then tallied up across the different criteria to create a league table of New Zealand's Top 10 Best Places for Families.
In first place is Wellington City.
Wellington City- How did it score?
The capital came up trumps when measured against all of our family-friendly criteria, but it was in the education arena particularly that Wellington really excelled. It was the best performing for NCEA level 1 and above results and adult degree graduates, and second-best for university qualification levels, lowest levels of truancy and school leavers with no formal attainment.
Wellington also scored well (4th best) for crime rate, youth apprehensions and availability of GPs per 100,000 population. The fact that it also has the highest average annual household income in the country ($78,400 compared to $60,700 nationally) means that mum and dad can probably easily afford the GP's consultation fee if little Joshua is feeling off-colour after all that swotting over school books.
So, here are the top 10:
New Zealand's Top 10 Best Places for Families
| 1 | Wellington City |
| 2 | Queenstown Lakes District |
| 3 | Selwyn District |
| 4 | North Shore City |
| 5 | Ashburton District |
| 6= | Auckland City |
| 6= | Waimakariri District |
| 8 | Porirua City |
| 9 | Christchurch City |
| 10 | Rodney District |
Highlights from the others
Queenstown Lakes District narrowly missed out on the top spot and - like Wellington City - performed well in all of the key family measures. The resort town has the fewest number of school leavers with no qualifications and the lowest unemployment rate of all of the places analysed.
Selwyn District and North Shore City returned very creditable scores as great places to raise a family. Selwyn has the least deprivation and the second lowest crime rate, while North Shore is in a police district with the lowest crime rate and the highest number of school leavers eligible to attend university.
Ashburton shares Selwyn's low crime rate and belongs to a District Health Board boasting 88 GPs per 100,000 population, making it the third best in the country. It also has a very low unemployment rate.
Auckland City has the highest crime rate but the lowest rate of youth apprehensions. Its DHB scored highest in terms of numbers of GPs available to the population and it has the second highest percentage of resident adult graduates.
Snapshots:
| House price affordability | ||
| Best | Southland | 3.6 times income |
| Worst | Tauranga District | 8.1 times income |
| % of people aged under 15 years | ||
| Highest | South Waikato District | 35.2% |
| Lowest | Queenstown Lakes District | 16.3% |
| % of school leavers with NCEA level 1 and above | ||
| Highest | Wellington City | 92.3% |
| Lowest | Porirua City | 63.5% |
| % of school leavers qualified to attend university | ||
| Highest | North Shore City | 56.0% |
| Lowest | Porirua City | 12.3% |
| % of school leavers with no formal attainment | ||
| Highest | Queenstown Lakes District | 0% |
| Lowest | Porirua City | 13.6% |
| % of unjustified absences from schools | ||
| Best | Timaru District | 0.7% |
| Waitaki District | 0.7% | |
| Worst | Manukau City | 4.2% |
| % of people 15+ with a Bachelor's degree or higher | ||
| Highest | Wellington City | 35.3% |
| Lowest | South Waikato District | 3.7% |
| % of households in deprivation deciles 1 to 3 | ||
| Best | Selwyn District | 69.9% |
| Worst | Thames/Coromandel District | 8.5% |
| Unemployment Rate | ||
| Best | Queenstown Lakes District | 1.7% |
| Worst | South Waikato District | 7.9% |
| Number of GPs per 100,000 population | ||
| Best | Auckland DHB | 96.3% |
| Worst | Whanganui DHB | 52.7% |
| Recorded offences as a % of population by police district | ||
| Highest | Auckland District | 13.2% |
| Lowest | Waitemata District | 7.6% |
| Youth apprehensions as a % of population by police district | ||
| Highest | Eastern District | 1.52% |
| Lowest | Auckland District | 0.42% |
All About Wellington City:
Photograph by: Donald Y Tong
Wellington City has a population of just over 190,000, which is slightly larger than Hamilton City but smaller than West Auckland's Waitakere City. It is part of the greater Wellington area which also includes the cities of Porirua, Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt, making it the third largest urban area in New Zealand with a population of over 380,000.
The city covers an area of 290 square kilometres and typical summer daytime temperatures range from 17 to 21 degrees centigrade. Winter days range from 11 to 14 degrees. Wellington averages about 2,025 hours or 169 days of sunshine per year.
Wellington is of course the capital of New Zealand and the centre of Government and parliment. It is also the country's cultural capital and home to Te Papa Tongarewa (the Museum of New Zealand), the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Museum of Wellington City and the biennial New Zealand International Arts Festival.
Almost 60% of the population are single and the city has a lively social scene (it has more cafes per capita than New York City) centred around Courtney Place and Lambton Quay. It is also the centre for feature film production in New Zealand and the suburb of Miramar is home to one of the world's leading filmmaking facilities and Richard Taylor and Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop.
The average house here costs almost $510,000 which is 30% higher than the national average, however Wellingtonians can afford it. In fact 35% of Wellington households earn over $100,000 p.a. compared to 19% of households across New Zealand.
| People | Wellington | New Zealand |
| Population | 179,446 | 4,027,947 |
| Population density | 618.5 | 14.9 |
| Population change | 9.5% | 7.8% |
| Median age | 33 | 35 |
| Households | 67,711 | 1,454,175 |
| Household size | 2.57 | 2.68 |
| Male population | 48.4% | 48.8% |
| Female population | 51.6% | 51.2% |
| Married population | 40.7% | 43.5% |
| Single population | 59.3% |
51.4% |
| Estimated Total Population By Age | Wellington | New Zealand |
| Age 0 to 4 | 6.2% | 6.9% |
| Age 5 to 9 | 5.5% | 6.9% |
| Age 10 to 14 | 5.5% | 7.2% |
| Age 15 to 19 | 7.2% | 7.6% |
| Age 20 to 24 | 10.8% | 6.9% |
| Age 25 to 29 | 9.7% | 6.3% |
| Age 30 to 34 | 8.8% | 6.6% |
| Age 35 to 39 | 8.6% | 7.4% |
| Age 40 to 44 | 8.0% | 7.5% |
| Age 45 to 49 | 7.1% | 7.4% |
| Age 50 to 54 | 5.8% | 6.4% |
| Age 55 to 59 | 4.9% | 5.7% |
| Age 60 to 64 | 3.7% | 4.7% |
| Age 65 to 69 | 2.7% | 3.9% |
| Age 70 to 74 | 1.9% | 2.9% |
| Age 75 to 79 | 1.5% | 2.5% |
| Age 80 to 84 | 1.2% | 1.8% |
| Age 85+ | 1.0% | 1.4% |
| Family | Wellington | New Zealand |
| Percentage of couples with children | 43.2% | 42.0% |
| Percentage of couples without children | 42.4% | 39.9% |
| Single, with children | 14.4% | 18.1% |
| Divorced | 4.2% | 7.6% |
| Separated | 2.1% | 3.7% |
| Widowed | 3.4% | 6.0% |
| Now married | 40.7% | 43.5% |
| Never married | 31.5% | 34.1% |
|
Housing |
Wellington | New Zealand |
 |
||
| Median home cost | $509,974 | $391,487 |
| Home appreciation | ||
| (1 year) | -2.9% | -4.5% |
| (5 years) | +72.3% | +80.5% |
| Homes owned | 57.4% | 62.7% |
| Homes rented | 37.4% | 31.1% |
All about Wellington City: Useful Links:
Homes for Sale in Wellington City
Te Papa Tongarewa (the museum of New Zealand)
Sources:
- Statistics New Zealand
- Census data 2001and 2006 - New Zealand Police
- Ministry of Education
- Ministry of Health
- QV data August 2008
Our thanks to the various parties who helped and contributed to the data within the report, including:
Statistics New Zealand, QV.co.nz, University of Auckland School of Statistics, Auckland City Libraries.
Stephen Hart is the author of the best-selling homebuyer's books, 'Where to live in Auckland' and the 'The Streetwise Homebuyer' and co-presenter of TV2's 'House Call' programme. He also writes a regular homebuyers' column for 'Herald Homes'.
For more about TopSpot reports, click here
Click here, to read the September 2008 ASB Regional Economic Scoreboard which takes the latest quarterly regional statistics and ranks the economic performance of New Zealand's 16 Regional Council areas. Ratings are based on specific measures such as employment, construction, retail trade and house prices.
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The content is considered accurate at the time of the publication, however Barbican Publishing nor ASB cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions.
Copyright: Barbican Publishing Ltd 2008
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