2 The diaspora (continued)
| Australia | Canada | Korea | Ireland | Italy | Nether-lands | 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 concentrated in a big country close to home. Sixty-six percent of Irish-born based outside Ireland live in the United Kingdom, for instance, and 83% of Canadian-born based outside Canada live in the United States. The bottom row of Table 2 shows figures for each country’s diaspora, once the biggest destination for that diaspora (ie, Australia for New Zealand, the UK for Ireland) is excluded. This might be called the “far-flung diaspora”. On this measure, New Zealand no longer appears particularly unusual. Compared to the country’s total population, New Zealand’s far-flung diaspora is considerably larger than that of Australia, Canada, Korea, and the United States, but is approximately equal to that of Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and is considerably smaller than that of Ireland.
| % of population outside country of birth in… | Australia | Canada | Korea | Ireland | Italy | Nether-lands | NZ | UK | USA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biggest destination | 37.4% | 83.4% | 53.2% | 66.0% | 22.9% | 21.9% | 77.4% | 32.3% | 32.5% |
| 2 biggest destinations | 58.5% | 90.8% | 87.7% | 85.3% | 42.4% | 42.7% | 90.1% | 53.5% | 52.4% |
| 5 biggest destinations | 78.0% | 93.5% | 92.8% | 91.5% | 60.1% | 60.2% | 95.1% | 72.6% | 66.7% |
| 10 biggest destinations | 89.0% | 96.0% | 96.6% | 96.7% | 84.1% | 83.1% | 98.1% | 86.8% | 78.3% |
Source – Calculated from data in Table 1.
Table 3 provides further data on geographical concentration. New Zealand’s diaspora is one of the most geographically concentrated of the nine countries chosen. For instance, 95% of the identified New Zealand diaspora lives in just five countries. For Australia, the equivalent figure is 78%, and for Italy and the Netherlands it is 60%.
