What the numbers reveal about when and how we die, assisted dying applications, the cost of being buried, suicide rates, and more.
This piece includes references to suicide. Please take care.
In 2023, 37,884 people in New Zealand died, a number that is slowly climbing as New Zealand’s population ages. It’s predicted that there will be 52,700 deaths per year in New Zealand by 2042.
Data from Te Whatu Ora, Statistics New Zealand and local councils reveals more about each of these deaths. Here are five graphs that show how life expectancy and causes of death are distributed unevenly, the impact of the assisted dying law, the role of policy in changing (or not changing) death rates, and what councils charge for a standard burial.
When will you die? It depends on your ethnicity
Want to understand how healthcare inequity plays out? New Zealand’s life expectancy rates between different communities provide a stark example, showing that Māori and Pasifika have shorter lives than Asian and Pākehā New Zealanders on the whole. Māori men, particularly, have the shortest lives out of any broad demographic group in New Zealand.
The other big trend in life expectancy is its slow increase. Most people know that length of life has increased dramatically in the last century, but realising that in 1950 the average New Zealand man lived until just 67 makes it remarkable that both men and women now live until at least 80 on average.
The reason for this is partially due to improvements in knowledge and access to healthcare, as well as reducing causes of death: cleaner water meaning fewer infectious diseases, laws about road safety reduce road deaths, and healthcare improvements extend the lives of those with deadly genetic or chronic health conditions. If you want to know more about this, you can try inserting different birth years into Stats NZ’s How long will I live? calculator (although it doesn’t account for ethnicity).
Everywhere in the world, women live longer than men, and this holds true in New Zealand. There are a few reasons for this: with only one X chromosome, men are more likely to have genetic disorders; in infancy, boys are also usually more prone to infectious diseases. In young adulthood, more men die in accidents, by suicide, and by violence. Compared to other countries, New Zealand’s gap of 3.7 years between male and female life expectancies is relatively small: in Russia, women live more than a decade longer than men.
How will you die? It also depends on your ethnicity
Infections aren’t a common cause of death in New Zealand, but non-communicable disease is the biggest killer. Combined, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease and suicide cause 90% of deaths in New Zealand. Cancer is the leading cause of death, with 10,487 people dying of it in 2021, the most recent year for which full data is available. Circulatory disease was the cause of death of another 10,297 people, while other circulatory disease, cerebrovascular disease (like strokes) and respiratory diseases caused another 11,133 deaths combined.
New Zealand is fairly similar to other wealthy, ageing countries in this make-up of different causes of death; heart disease in particular is the most common, and increasing, cause of death around the world. Differences in sex and ethnicity are again a reminder of unequal health outcomes: Māori are much more likely to die of chronic respiratory diseases than other groups, and Pacific people are much more likely to die of diabetes. Men have much higher rates of death from heart diseases and from external causes of death, including assaults, road accidents and suicide.
What happens to assisted dying applications?
Assisted dying is an option that was introduced in 2021, following a 2020 referendum. It allows people who have a terminal disease and have been given less than six months to live the possibility to die at a time and place of their choosing – if their application is approved by two registered medical professionals.
A patient must ask their medical professional for information about this option; medical professionals cannot bring it up with patients themselves. “We will talk to your specialists, your GP and hospice staff, and look through all your files to ascertain that you have less than six months to live. It is a very thorough and rigorous process,” an independent medical practitioner who assesses applications told The Spinoff last year.
The annual report for the year ending December 2023 (as well as November and December 2022, to make the reports align with calendar years) shows that while 420 assisted deaths happened during this time, more of the people who applied died in the process or were found ineligible for a variety of reasons. With the majority of those who apply Pakehā, researchers are talking to family members about the experience of the service, looking at how safeguards are operating and whether the option can be accessed equally.
How does policy change death rates?
For Death Week last year, Emma Vitz looked at how changes in policy, like the introduction of seatbelts, have changed the rate of road deaths in New Zealand. Road deaths are an example of an outcome where policy can have a very clear and immediate impact on an issue.
With other causes of death, it’s much harder to see immediate impacts of changing policy: more New Zealanders today are dying of cancer, for example, which is partially because we are living longer, and cancer is a non-infectious disease that is very complicated to treat – it can’t be avoided by better sanitation. There are also dozens of muddying factors: in the last 50 years, the advance of techniques like chemotherapy, widespread screening programmes for breast cancer and the use of the HPV vaccine have made some cancer types less common and less lethal.
One example of a cancer type that has been affected by policy is lung cancer, which is much, much more common in people who smoke regularly. Lung cancer diagnosis and death rates have been steadily (but slowly) declining since the 1980s, as smoking has become increasingly regulated. Because the disease often develops after decades of smoking, the impact of specific policies is less obvious, and delayed by years: lung cancer death rates peaked more than 30 years after tobacco consumption peaked in 1953. However, lung cancer remains New Zealand’s deadliest cancer type today.
Other causes of death are much harder to shift with policy. Suicide deaths have dropped slightly since the 1990s, where the rate increased to more than 15 people per 100,000 dying of suicide each year. Mental illness has become a bigger focus for health professionals and the government, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into successive campaigns to lower suicide levels, particularly for youth.
But as a product of complex individual and social factors, it’s much harder to target suicide rates than it is to limit access to cigarettes or mandate seatbelts. Increasing funding to mental health services is just once piece of the puzzle: increasing community resilience, hope and resourcing makes a difference to those in need, but this can’t be achieved with any one policy or suicide prevention document. Since the peak in 1998, with a rate of 15.1 people dying of suicide per 100,000 people, suicide rates have hovered between 11 and 13 deaths per 100,000 people per year
What does it cost to get buried?
In New Zealand, there are a few options for what happens to someone’s body after they’ve died. Cremation is the more popular option, with 69% of bodies being cremated in 2023, according to a Funeral Directors Association report. Burials are the other main option (burials at sea are allowed, but uncommon, and water cremation isn’t an option in New Zealand at the moment), and bodies must be buried either in a council-run public cemetery; a denominational burial ground (like a Catholic or Anglican churchyard); an urupā; or a private burial ground. Bodies can be buried elsewhere, but the nearest District Court has to be notified first.
Council-run burial grounds are almost always bigger than other burial options. They’re also expensive: buying a plot of land costs a few hundred dollars at the very least, with the cost of interring a body (digging the grave) usually more than doubling the fee. Many areas also have limited space for new cemeteries, which is a conundrum for councils as burial grounds fill up.
The cost of buying a council-owned plot varies hugely around the country, roughly following other patterns of land value: smaller towns and rural areas are generally cheaper than bigger towns and cities. However, the pattern doesn’t entirely hold up, with New Plymouth being the most expensive place to be buried. While the cost of cremating a body varies, most people don’t have to purchase land to put ashes in, making it a generally less expensive option.
If you or someone you know is in need of support, get in touch:
TAUTOKO Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865
1737 – Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time for support from a trained counsellor
Lifeline – 0800 543 354 – Free text 4357 (HELP)
Samaritans – 0800 726 666
Youthline – 0800 376 633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz or online chat. Open 24/7.