Higher Living Standards
Page updated 13 Aug 2013
Our vision is to be a world-class Treasury working for higher living standards for New Zealanders.
By living standards we mean much more than just income or GDP:
It includes a broad range of material and non-material factors which impact on well-being (such as trust, education, health and environmental quality).
This diagram summarises what we think are the important factors that we need to consider for achieving our goal of higher living standards.
The latest developments in our Living Standards Work
We are working with Statistics New Zealand on measuring New Zealand's progress on all the living standards dimensions. As a starting point, we have used the United Nations Human Development Index to look at New Zealand progress over the last 150 years: hls-performance-150years.pdf (651 KB).
Find out more about:
- What Treasury thinks is important for living standards from our working paper Working Towards Higher Living Standards for New Zealanders.
- The reason why Treasury chose these five aspects:
- Improving the Living Standards of New Zealanders: Moving from a Framework to Implementation (Speech by Dr Girol Karacaoglu).
- The related media statement by the Treasury: Papers a new tool for fresh thinking on raising living standards.
- Living Standards: The Heart of Our Policy Advice: sp-livingstandards-advice.pdf (346 KB).
- Support for people applying the Treasury framework through draft policy analyst guides and background notes. We would like to encourage feedback on these. Contact us at guidance@treasury.govt.nz.
Documents are available in PDF format only. Contact information@treasury.govt.nz to request HTML versions. Using PDF Files
| Dimension | Draft Analyst Guide | Background Notes or Further Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Economic Growth | hls-ag-econgrow-jan13.pdf (99 KB) | hls-bg-econgrow-jan13.pdf (81 KB) |
| Sustainability for the Future | hls-ag-sust-jan13.pdf (500 KB) | Statistics New Zealand Sustainable Development Website |
| Increasing Equity | hls-ag-equity-jan13.pdf (128 KB) | hls-bg-equity-aug13.pdf (417 KB) |
| Social Infrastructure | hls-ag-socinfr-jan13.pdf (157 KB) | hls-bg-socinfr-jul13.pdf (801 KB) |
| Managing Risks | hls-ag-risks-jan13.pdf (117 KB) | hls-bg-risks-jan13.pdf (109 KB) |
- A living standards hub that anyone can join at www.gen.org.nz where we are encouraging researchers to contribute to an evidence base that is available to everyone working in this area.
Our next steps are ...
- working collaboratively with others across the public sector to develop measures for each of the five key aspects. New Zealand's performance over the last 150 years: hls-performance-150years.pdf (651 KB)
- using the Living Standards aid in our work, and assess whether it improves our policy advice
- building on the Living Standards Hub to work with others to develop our framework further.
