New Zealand’s residents are happy but crime is high according to a new international survey from the OECD.
The just published report draws on information from up to and including 2006.
Findings
School Mathematics, Reading and Sciences
Mathematics: New Zealand’s students scored 7th best of the 30 countries, bested by Finland, Korea, Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada and Japan. (Australia was 8th equal, UK was 18th and USA was 25th.)
Reading: New Zealand’s students scored 4th best of the 30 countries, bested by Korea, Finland and Canada. (Australia was 6th, UK was 13th and USA was 30th.)
Sciences: New Zealand’s students scored 4th best of the 30 countries, bested by Finland, Canada and Japan. (Australia was 5th, UK was 9th and USA was 21st.)
Teen literacy: New Zealand is the only OECD country in which reading gaps for 15-year-olds in favour of girls are falling.
Foreign Born Population
Luxemburg (35%), Switzerland (24%) and Australia (24%) had a highest proportion of their populations born in other countries. With 22 percent born overseas, New Zealand ranked fourth in the foreign-born residents comparison.
Life Satisfaction
The ten countries (in order of highest satisfaction first) in which people were most satisfied with their lives were Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Belgium and Sweden.
People in the USA were 11th most satisfied with their lives and people in the UK were 15th most satisfied.
Crime
New Zealanders, despite being satisfied with the lives overall, had higher fear of crime than the OECD and suffered above average crime victimisation rates.
Car theft in New Zealand was highest (equal with the UK) in the OECD.
Good news for cyclists! Bicycle theft was low in New Zealand, with only four countries enjoying lower theft rates than New Zealand.
Burglary reports were the second highest in the OECD. Only the UK was worse. Burglary rates in New Zealand were over four times worse than in Sweden, double the rates of France and just over a quarter worse than the USA.
New Zealand had the eighth highest rate of reported robberies.
When asked if they felt unsafe or very unsafe on the street after dark, 30 percent of New Zealanders said yes. This compares with 31 percent in the UK, 27 percent in Australia, 19 percent in the USA and 17 percent in Canada. Residents of ten countries felt less safe than New Zealanders, including Greece, Italy, Japan, Spain and Germany.
Previous surveys in New Zealand have shown crime rates vary by as much as a factor of three of four between low crime areas and high crime areas.
The areas of New Zealand where crime is usually lowest are Auckland’s North Shore, Nelson and rural Canterbury.