September 23, 2019
Māori up to 16.5 percent of population
Māori now make up 16.5 percent of the New Zealand population, up from 14.9 percent in 2013, or 775,836 people.
That's according to the first dataset released from the 2018 Census.
At almost 3.3 million, people of European descent remain the largest ethnic group, but as a share of the population they have dropped from 74 percent to 70.2 percent.
Stats NZ says New Zealand’s cultural make-up is becoming more diverse after high population growth in the past five years.
There were 1,271,775 people in the census usually resident population count in March 2018 who were born overseas.
That's 27.4 percent, up from 25.2 percent in 2013.
Asian at 15.1 percent remain the third largest ethnic group, with more than 1 in 5 people who identified with at least one Asian ethnic group being New Zealand-born
Some 8.1 percent of people identified with at least one Pacific ethnic group, up from 7.4 percent in 2013, with the largest groups being Samoan, Tongan, and Cook Islands Māori.
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