April 29, 2019
Smoking costs hit Māori households
The cost of living for Māori is going up in smoke.
Stats New Zealand says while the national average cost of living for the three months to March rose 0.1 percent, for Māori it was 0.4 percent and for beneficiaries 0.6 percent.
In large part that’s because of the annual 10 percent hike on cigarettes and tobacco, which typically account for 4.1 percent of a beneficiary's household spending, 4.8 percent of spending in a Māori household and 2.5 percent across all households.
One cigarette now costs about $1.50, up from about 54 cents a decade ago.
Cheaper petrol and international airfares benefitted the higher-spending households in the March quarter.
On an annual basis, the cost of living for all households was up 1.4 percent in the March quarter, slowing from the 2.1 percent pace in the December quarter.
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