New Zealand's Diaspora and Overseas-born Population

Bryant, John; Law, David Working Paper New Zealand's Diaspora and Overseas-born Population New Zealand Treasury Working Paper, No. 04/13 Provided in Cooperation with: The Treasury, New Zealand Government Suggested Citation: Bryant, John; Law, David (2004) : New Zealand's Diaspora and Overseas-born Population, New Zealand Treasury Working Paper, No. 04/13, New Zealand Government, The Treasury, Wellington This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/205553 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ New Zealand’s Diaspora and Overseas-born Population John Bryant and David Law N EW Z EALAND T REASURY W ORKING P APER 04/13 S EPTEMBER 2004 NZ TREASURY WORKING PAPER 04/13 New Zealand’s Diaspora and Overseas-born Population MONTH / YEAR September 2004 AUTHORS John Bryant New Zealand Treasury PO Box 3724 Wellington 6015 NEW ZEALAND Email Telephone Fax [email protected] + 64 4 917 7027 + 64 4 473 1151 David Law New Zealand Treasury PO Box 3724 Wellington 6015 NEW ZEALAND Email Telephone Fax [email protected].nz + 64 4 471 5233 + 64 4 473 0982 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to thank Statistics New Zealand for providing us with their unpublished study of the size of the New Zealand diaspora. Thank you also to Richard Bedford, Jim Rose, Bob Buckle, participants at a Treasury seminar and to Andrew Binning and Philip Liu for their excellent research assistance. NZ TREASURY New Zealand Treasury PO Box 3724 Wellington 6015 NEW ZEALAND Email Telephone Website [email protected] + 64 4 472 2733 www.treasury.govt.nz DISCLAIMER The views, opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Working Paper are strictly those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the New Zealand Treasury. The Treasury takes no responsibility for any errors or omissions in, or for the correctness of, the information contained in these working papers. The paper is presented not as policy, but to inform and stimulate wider debate. Abstract Many New Zealand-born people migrate overseas, creating a diaspora, and many overseas-born people migrate to New Zealand. Both the diaspora and the overseas-born population in New Zealand may facilitate the international exchange of goods and ideas. Much discussion of international linkages has, however, been limited by a lack of data on numbers of people involved. Based mainly on place-of-birth data from national censuses, this paper provides estimates of the size and structure of New Zealand’s diaspora and overseas-born population, as well as comparisons with selected OECD countries such as Australia. A tentative conclusion is that the potential contribution of New Zealand’s diaspora may have been overestimated, and the contribution of the overseas-born population underestimated. JEL CLASSIFICATION F22 – International Migration J19 – Demographic Economics - Other KEYWORDS International migration; diaspora; measurement; New Zealand; Australia; population; emigration; immigration WP 04/13 | NEW ZEALAND’S DIASPORA AND OVERSEAS-BORN PUPULATION i Table of Contents Abstract...............................................................................................................................i Table of Contents ..............................................................................................................ii List of Tables......................................................................................................................ii 1 Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 2 The diaspora.............................................................................................................2 3 The reverse diaspora...............................................................................................5 4 Discussion................................................................................................................9 References .......................................................................................................................11 Appendix ..........................................................................................................................12 List of Tables Table 1 – International diaspora, New Zealand and eight selected countries, 2001..........................3 Table 2 – Geographical distributions of populations born in New Zealand and eight selected countries, 2001..........................................................................................................................4 Table 3 – Geographical distributions of populations born in New Zealand and eight selected countries, 2001..........................................................................................................................5 Table 4 – Distribution of New Zealand population by place of birth, 1981 and 2001 .........................6 Table 5 – Foreign-born population as percent of total population, selected countries, 20002001 ........................................................................................................................................7 Table 6 – The top 30 sources of migrants to New Zealand, 2001......................................................7 Table 7 – Diversity of migrant populations, New Zealand and selected countries, 2001...................8 Table 8 – Number of migrant communities in New Zealand, 1981-2001 ...........................................8 Table 9 - Numbers of migrant communities, New Zealand and selected countries, 2001.................8 Table 10 – National population, New Zealand and selected countries, 2001.....................................9 Appendix Table 1 – Data sources for Tables 1, 5, 7 and 9...............................................................12 WP 04/13 | NEW ZEALAND’S DIASPORA AND OVERSEAS-BORN PUPULATION ii New Zealand’s Diaspora and Overseas-born Population 1 Introduction Many government agencies and social commentators argue that, by linking New Zealand into the rest of the world, migrants can stimulate the exchange of goods and ideas, and hence improve economic performance. Migrants are seen as potential intermediaries, facilitating international flows of information. One of the official motivations for New Zealand’s business visa scheme, for instance, is that “international trade and investment are facilitated through the knowledge of international markets, contacts and languages of business migrants and visitors” (New Zealand Immigration Service 2002). In the same vein, Deutsche Bank’s analysis of the New Zealand economy, prepared for the 2003 Knowledge Wave Conference, suggests “targeted immigration” and “diaspora policy” as ways of increasing New Zealand’s “global connectedness” and economic growth (Deutsche Bank 2003). Recent Treasury research confirms that migrants do in fact boost trade: all else equal, the more migrants New Zealand receives from a particular country, the more New Zealand tends to trade with that country (Bryant, Genç and Law 2004). Discussions of the contributions of migrants and global connections are often hampered, however, by a lack of information about basic numbers. Estimates of the size of the New Zealand diaspora, for instance, vary by a factor of two.1 Many people seem to underestimate the size of the “reverse diaspora”—the stock of immigrants in New Zealand. There are also few systematic comparisons between New Zealand’s migration numbers and those of similar countries. This paper aims to supply some of the missing numbers. It presents some basic data on the size and structure of New Zealand’s diaspora and immigrant population. Virtually all of the data are derived from the “place of birth” question from New Zealand and overseas censuses. The paper provides numerous international comparisons. The conclusion of the paper compares the diaspora and reverse diaspora, and comments briefly on implications. 1 The term “diaspora” is widely used in New Zealand to refer to the spread of New Zealanders overseas through temporary or permanent migration. The traditional meaning of the term is the international population of a given ethnicity, regardless of where they were born. WP 04/13 | NEW ZEALAND’S DIASPORA AND OVERSEAS-BORN PUPULATION 1 2 The diaspora This section gives estimates of the size and geographical distribution of the New Zealand diaspora. The principal source of data is the “place of birth” question in national censuses. We treat a person as belonging to the New Zealand diaspora if the person was born in New Zealand but is resident in another country at the time of the other country’s census. This means defining a person as a “New Zealander” if, and only if, that person was born in New Zealand. We assemble statistics on the diasporas of eight comparator countries using the same approach. Some previous research has used essentially the same methods. An unpublished study by Statistics New Zealand, for instance, used overseas data on numbers of resident New Zealanders to estimate the size of the New Zealand diaspora. A report on the Australian diaspora relies on estimates derived from consular activity to calculate numbers of Australians overseas, but uses census data to estimate numbers of New Zealanders overseas (Hugo, Rudd and Harris 2003: Table 2.5). We have, however, obtained data from a much larger number of destination countries than these earlier studies, aided by the increasing tendency for statistical agencies to place census results on their internet sites. Although our definition captures one important aspect of the everyday concept of “New Zealander”, “Australian”, and so on, it does lead to some anomalies. For instance, it excludes some people who might ordinarily be included, such as those who moved to New Zealand as young children. It also includes people who might ordinarily be excluded, such as those who moved overseas as young children. These somewhat artificial exclusions and inclusions should, to some unknown extent, offset one another. The birthplace definition also has some important technical advantages. First, data on place of birth are readily available, including data from other countries. Second, the meaning of place of birth is clear, so the associated data are likely to be relatively reliable. Third, people have only one place of birth, so there is no danger of double counting. Unlike the unpublished Statistics New Zealand study, and unlike some estimates of the Irish or Italian diasporas, we make no attempt to include spouses or descendants. Data with which to estimate numbers of spouses and descendants are only available for a few countries, such as Australia. It is also unclear whether spouses and descendants have the same potential as do New Zealand-born themselves to be international intermediaries. Table 1 shows data on foreign and native populations from the websites of 20 national statistical agencies.2 In Table 1, as in all tables in this paper, the estimates refer to the “usually resident” population: that is, the estimates try to include local residents temporarily overseas, and exclude overseas residents temporarily in the country. The row for Australia, for instance, shows the number of Australian residents born in Australia, Canada, Korea, and the other six countries, as recorded in Australia’s 2001 Census. Dashes indicate no data available, which, since statistical agencies generally report the major migration sources first, implies that the number of immigrants was small. 2 We tried a further 20 or so websites, but were unable to obtain comparable data. WP 04/13 | NEW ZEALAND’S DIASPORA AND OVERSEAS-BORN PUPULATION 2 Table 1 – International diaspora, New Zealand and eight selected countries, 2001 Country of birth Country of residence Australia Canada Korea Ireland Italy Netherlands New Zealand United Kingdom United States Argentinaa-- -- -- -- 328,113 -- -- -- -- Australia 13,629,685 27,289 38,900 50,235 218,718 83,324 355,765 1,036,245 53,694 Austria 659 1,658 1,446 546 26,099 5,248 156 6,786 7,371 Canada 18,910 23,991,910 82,745 26,210 318,095 118,460 9,475 614,610 258,420 Denmark 886 1,786 483 1,129 3,110 4,955 382 11,670 6,219 Finland 673 1,261 152 244 1,057 832 88 3,067 3,050 Franceb2,868 8,790 9,781 3,858 523,080 20,813 890 59,356 26,320 Germanye8,322 12,646 22,634 15,594 616,282 112,362 1,643 115,167 113,528 Ireland 5,947 3,926 -- 3,354,025 3,634 3,428 2,195 242,155 20,977 Italye2,881 2,683 3,793 2,204 56,573,464 7,312 234 24,592 18,941 Japanc,e 4,759 5,824 560,414 -- 1,017 -- 1,814 8,789 38,954 Koreae-- -- 48,021,543 -- -- -- -- -- -- Netherlands 12,805 12,199 2,764 7,248 35,193 13,140,336 4,260 74,869 29,093 New Zealand 56,142 7,770 17,934 6,726 1,440 22,239 2,890,869 210,978 13,344 Norway -- -- 6,086 -- -- 4,140 -- 14,177 14,666 Spain 1,012 1,489 1,780 3,677 21,833 16,383 275 88,107 12,323 Sweden 2,387 2,324 9,320 1,200 6,538 4,777 687 15,458 14,711 Thailandd, e 1,400 1,400 1,800 -- 600 900 300 2,300 5,200 United Kingdom 107,871 72,518 -- 533,852 107,244 40,438 58,286 53,892,620 158,434 United Statesd60,965 820,771 864,125 156,474 473,338 94,570 22,872 677,751 250,314,017 Total 13,918,172 24,976,244 49,645,700 4,163,222 59,258,855 13,680,517 3,350,191 57,098,697251,109,262 Total outside country of birth 288,48 7 984,334 1,624,15 7 809,19 7 2,685,391 540,181 459,322 3,206,07 7 795,24 5 a1991 b1999 c1995 d2000 eCitizenship rather than birth Note – Dashes indicate no data available. Sources – See Appendix Table 1. The rows for Germany, Italy, Japan, and Thailand are based on data for citizenship rather than birthplace. It seems unlikely that this makes much difference to the results.3 Reading down the columns of Table 1 gives, for each country, the international distribution of people born in that country. The “total” row at the bottom of the table shows the number of people born in the country, including both those inside and outside the country. The totals, and the sub-totals for people outside their country of birth, are all underestimates, because we have been unable to obtain data on immigrants for all countries. We suspect that, for New Zealand, the degree of underestimation is relatively small. All the major countries not included in Table 1 are non-English-speaking. For almost all the non-English-speaking countries shown in Table 1, the number of resident New Zealanders is fairly low. There are, for instance, only 890 New Zealanders reported as living in France, only 234 in Italy, and only 88 in Finland. It seems likely that the numbers of New Zealanders living in countries not included in Table 1 runs to thousands rather than tens of thousands. 3 The use of citizenship rather than birthplace could, however, make a substantial difference to estimates of overall foreign population in these countries. See Section 3 for details. WP 04/13 | NEW ZEALAND’S DIASPORA AND OVERSEAS-BORN PUPULATION 3 Table 1 shows that there were something in excess of 460,000 New Zealand-born living outside New Zealand in 2001. Of these, almost 360,000 were living in Australia. This represents about 11% of all New Zealand-born, and 77% of the total New Zealand-born population living outside New Zealand. The number of New Zealanders in other countries is much smaller than is often assumed. Expatriates in the United Kingdom often claim that London is New Zealand’s third or fourth largest city. As Table 1 shows, however, the number of New Zealand-born residents in the whole of the United Kingdom in 2001 was less than 60,000.4 The New Zealand-born populations in the United States and Canada are also not particularly large, and we were able to identify only three non-Englishspeaking countries with New Zealand-born populations of more than 1,000. The estimate of something over 460,000 New Zealanders living overseas is consistent with the fact that New Zealand lost 484,000 citizens abroad over the period 1954-2001 (Bushnell and Choy 2001: 4). The two measures would not, in general be equal, since some New Zealand citizens are not born in New Zealand, and since the net loss measure does not take account of deaths. The number 460,000 is, however, substantially smaller than the figure of one million that is often cited as the size of the New Zealand diaspora. Some of the difference may be attributed to definitions: the larger estimates tend to include children and spouses of New Zealanders. The difference does, however, illustrate the danger of generalising from anecdotes and from impressions gained on the London Underground. Table 2 – Geographical distributions of populations born in New Zealand and eight selected countries, 2001 Australia Canada Korea Ireland Italy Netherlands New Zealand United Kingdom United States In country of birth 97.9% 96.1% 96.7% 80.6% 95.5% 96.1% 86.3% 94.4% 99.7% Outside country of birth 2.1% 3.9% 3.3% 19.4% 4.5% 3.9% 13.7% 5.6% 0.3% Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% Outside country of birth (excl. main destination) 1.3% 0.7% 1.5% 6.6% 3.5% 3.1% 3.1% 3.8% 0.2% Source – Calculated from data in Table 1. Table 2 summarises the data shown in Table 1. The second row of the table gives the number of people living outside their country of birth as a percentage of the “total” population shown at the bottom of Table 1. Although the percentage of New Zealanders outside their country of birth is lower than the percentage of Irish, it is still substantially higher than for other countries in the table. It is several times higher than the percentages for Australia and Canada, even though commentators in both these countries express concerns about losing citizens overseas. Most of the countries shown in Tables 1 and 2 probably have larger numbers of people living overseas than is typical for wealthy countries, so New Zealand is likely to look even more unusual compared with the OECD average. As noted already, however, most of New Zealand’s large diaspora is located in one country, Australia. Some of the comparator countries’ diasporas are also heavily 4 If it is assumed that about 50,000 of the almost 60,000 New Zealanders in the United Kingdom lived in London in 2001, then London was New Zealand’s eleventh-biggest city, behind Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, Napier-Hastings, Dunedin, Tauranga, Palmerston North, Rotorua, and Nelson, and just ahead of New Plymouth (population 49,100). (These city population numbers were obtained from the Subnational Population Estimates page on the Statistics New Zealand website.) WP 04/13 | NEW ZEALAND’S DIASPORA AND OVERSEAS-BORN PUPULATION 4 References Bryant, John, Murat Genç and David Law (2004) "Trade and migration to New Zealand." Wellington, New Zealand Treasury, Working Paper No 04/18. Bushnell, Peter and Wai Kin Choy (2001) "'go west, young man, go west!'?" Wellington, New Zealand Treasury, Working Paper No 01/7. <http://www.treasury.govt.nz/workingpapers/2001/twp01-7.pdf> Coleman, David A. (2003) "Two-and-a-half cheers: A review essay on the international migration report 2003." Population and Development Review 29(2): 305-318. Deutsche Bank (2003) "The New Zealand economy and the growth debate." Discussion paper for the Knowledge Wave conference, 18-21 February, Auckland. <http://www.knowledgewave.org.nz/forum_2003/background_reading/Knowledgew ave2003.pdf> Hugo, Graeme, Dianne Rudd and Kevin Harris (2003) "Australia's diaspora: Its size, nature and policy implications." Melbourne, Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), Information Paper No 80. Lidgard, Jacqueline, Richard D Bedford and Joanne E Goodwin (1998) "International migration from northeast asia and population change in New Zealand, 1986 to 1996." Hamilton, University of Waikato, Population Studies Centre, Discussion Paper No 26. New Zealand Immigration Service (2002) "Business immigration: The evaluation of the 1999 business immigration policy." Wellington, Department of Labour, Immigration Research Programme. <http://www.dol.govt.nz/publication-view.asp?ID=163> OECD (2003) "OECD economic surveys: New Zealand." Paris, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. WP 04/13 | NEW ZEALAND’S DIASPORA AND OVERSEAS-BORN PUPULATION 11 Appendix Appendix Table 1 – Data sources for Tables 1, 5, 7 and 9 Country Internet address Argentina http://www.indec.mecon.ar/ Australia Australian Bureau of Statistics "Basic Community Profile" Catalogue No. 2001.0, Table B06 Austria http://www.statistik.at/neuerscheinungen/vzaustria.shtml Canada http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/standard/themes/RetrieveProductTable.cfm?Te mporal=2001&PID=62124&APATH=3&GID=431515&METH=1&PTYPE=55440&THEME=43&FOC US=0&AID=0&PLACENAME=0&PROVINCE=0&SEARCH=0&GC=0&GK=0&VID=0&FL=0&RL=0& FREE=0 Denmark http://www.statistikbanken.dk/statbank5a/default.asp?w=1024 Finland http://www.migrationinformation.org/GlobalData/countrydata/data.cfm France http://www.ined.fr/englishversion/figures/france/index.html Germany http://www.migrationinformation.org/GlobalData/countrydata/data.cfm Ireland http://www.cso.ie/census/vol4_index.htm. Table 30A. Italy http://demo.istat.it/e/stra1/start.html Japan http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/kokusei/1995/1518.htm Korea http://www.nso.go.kr/cgibin/SWS_1021.cgi?KorEng=2&A_UNFOLD=1&TableID=MT_ETITLE&TitleID=BB&FPub=4&UserID = Netherlands http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/start.asp?LA=en&DM=SLEN&lp=Search/Search New Zealand http://xtabs.stats.govt.nz/eng/TableFinder/index.asp Norway http://www.migrationinformation.org/GlobalData/countrydata/data.cfm Spain http://www.ine.es/censo/en/consulta.jsp Sweden http://www.ssd.scb.se/databaser/makro/SubTable.asp?yp=tansss&xu=C9233001&omradekod=BE& huvudtabell=UtrikesFoddaR&omradetext=Population&tabelltext=Foreign%2Dborn+persons+in+Swe den+by+country+of+birth%2C+age+and+sex%2E+Year&preskat=O&prodid=BE0101&starttid=2000 &stopptid=2003&Fromwhere=M&lang=2&langdb=2 Thailand http://www.nso.go.th/pop2000/tables_e.htm United Kingdom 2001 Census Report for England and Wales, Part 3, Table UV08 at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=10441&Pos=&ColRank=1&Rank=422; http://www.nisra.gov.uk/census/Census2001Output/UnivariateTables/uv_tables1.html#country%20o f%20birth; Table S15 http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/grosweb/grosweb.nsf/pages/scotcen6 United States http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_ts=76463946999 WP 04/13 | NEW ZEALAND’S DIASPORA AND OVERSEAS-BORN PUPULATION 12