In the past year, New Zealand’s population has grown significantly, adding about 130,700 people.
This information was shared today by Stats NZ, the country’s statistics agency, marking a 2.5% increase since March 2023.
The increase in population can be attributed to two main factors: natural growth and migration. Natural growth, which is the difference between the number of births and deaths, accounted for 19,500 of the new residents. Migration, the number of people moving to New Zealand minus those leaving, contributed an impressive 111,100 people to the population growth.
During the same period, New Zealand also experienced a slight decline in the number of births and deaths compared to the previous year. There were 56,277 babies born in the year ending March 2024, which is about 2,500 fewer than the year before. The number of deaths was 37,623, also down by over 1,000 from the previous year.
Other statistics released include that the total fertility rate dropped to 1.52 births per woman, and the infant mortality rate was 3.8 deaths per 1,000 live births.
As of March 2024, the estimated number of people living in New Zealand was around 5,338,900, split almost evenly between females and males, with median ages of 38.9 and 37.1 respectively.
