2.3.1  The baby boom and after (continued)

Definitional issues complicate interpretation of the trends in Maori fertility. Up until 1990, the ethnicity of a birth was determined by the “degree of blood” of the child; after that date it was determined by the self-identification of the mother. The apparent increase in Maori over the 1990s may well be an artefact: the switch to the self-identification definition may have revealed differences that the less socially meaningful “degree of blood” definition had obscured.

Figure 7 – Total fertility rate, Maori population and total population, 1900-2000

Notes: 1. The total fertility rate is defined as the number of births a woman would have over her lifetime if prevailing age-specific fertility rates were maintained indefinitely. 2. Data for 1962-1990 are based on the “de facto” population, data for 1991-2000 on the “resident” population. See the text for details.

Source: Maori 1901-1966 – Pool (Pool 1991); Total 1926-1961 – Statistics New Zealand (1998b: Table 5.10); Total and Maori 1962-2000 - Statistics New Zealand (2001b: Table 2.08).

Besides having fewer babies than during the baby boom, most New Zealand women also now have them later. As Figure 8 shows, the peak childbearing years for the population as a whole has moved back by several years. The shift is, however, much less marked for Maori women.

Figure 8 – Age-specific fertility rates

Source: Statistics New Zealand (2001b: Table 2.11)

The data on the marital status of mothers shown in Figure 9 imply that there has been a steady decline during recent decades in the proportion of babies born to mothers who were legally married at the time of the birth. Childbearing has become less tightly linked to legal marriage. An unintended pregnancy is now much less likely to precipitate a formal marriage, and a formal marriage is no longer a prerequisite to intentionally becoming pregnant (Dickson, Ball, Edmeades, Hanson and Pool 1997: 221-5).

Figure 9: Percent of live births to married mothers

Source: Statistics New Zealand (2001b: Table 2.04)

One final contrast between the baby boom and after is the degree to which women participate in the labour force. Figure 2 presented estimates of male and female labour force participation. The estimates extend back to the 1870s, but to achieve some comparability across time it has been necessary to use a slightly unusual definition of labour force participation. As with standard definitions, the labour force participation rate is calculated as the number of working age people who are employed or unemployed but looking for work, divided by the number of working age people. However, whereas most modern series usually include part-time workers as employed, this series does not. Up until 1976, full-time work is defined as 20 or more hours per week; from 1986 it is defined as 30 or more hours. The working age population is defined as ages 15 and higher.

Figure 2 shows women’s labour force participation increasing slowly between the 1970s and 1960s, and then increasing somewhat more quickly afterwards. Interpretation of post-1960s trend is made more difficult by the definitional change between 1976 and 1986, which would have reduced measured labour force participation. Even allowing for the definitional change, the estimates for both males and females 1986 appear anomalous. The message is, nevertheless clear: female labour force participation has moved to historically high rates since the baby boom. Although participation rates for men appear to have moved around over time, no long term trend up or down comparable to that women is apparent from the figure.

Over recent decades, women’s hourly earnings have gradually been converging with those of men. Hourly earnings for women were 73% of those of men in 1974, and 86% in 2001 (Ministry of Women's Affairs 2002: Figure 1).

Interpreting and explaining the trends outlined above is difficult and contentious, and this section aims only to make a few basic observations. An overview of existing analyses of the New Zealand family is provided by Shirley, Koopman-Boyden, Pool and St John (1997).

Many social commentators regard the family of the baby boom era as the prototypical “traditional” family. There is some justification for doing so. The baby boom era marked the end of a long period when many features of the contemporary family such as de facto marriages, significant divorce rates, and women in the workforce were still rare. But, at least for Pakeha, the baby boom was itself something of an innovation. As illustrated by Figures 3 and 6, the Pakeha baby boom generations married exceptionally early and had exceptionally many children compared to generations before them.

A second point to note is that in New Zealand, as in other countries, the various features of the baby boom family such as those listed in Table 1 were mutually reinforcing (Lee and Casterline 1996). High fertility, for instance, required low labour force participation by women, which made them dependent on men. This dependence was made less risky by the use of a legally sanctioned marriage contract with a relatively low probability of divorce. Change in one part of the system implied change in the other parts. Lower fertility, for instance, freed up women to enter the labour force, which made them less dependent on men, and helped make possible the rise of divorce and de facto relationships. Causation also ran in the opposite direction: an increase in the probability of divorce made it more risky to withdraw from the labour force and have children.

Changes in the family were of course bound up with wider changes in society. One such change was the rise and fall of a wide range of government policies, from family benefits to controlled interest rates, favouring young families (Thomson 1996). Another was the temporary return of the “cult of domesticity” described in Section 2.2.4. The decades since World War II have seen particularly dramatic changes in Maori society, from urbanisation, the rise in formal employment and the rapid reduction in childhood mortality rates. This helps explain why many features of Maori family life, such as fertility levels, were so rapidly transformed.