Timeframe
2009–2010
Funding
New Zealand Families Commission
COMPASS staff
Gerard Cotterell
Martin von Randow
Stephen McTaggart
Daniel Patrick
Collaborators
University of Auckland
Tamasailau Sua’ali’i-Sauni
Description
This study involved a detailed demographic analysis of changes in Pacific families and the composition of Pacific households over a 25-year period. The quantitative analysis component of this used the family and whānau wellbeing indicators created as part of the Family Whānau & Wellbeing Project.
Similarly to how those indicators described families with “at least one adult” with a certain criterion, the analyses here looked at households with “at least one Pacific adult”. Outputs were presented for this whole population, and then separately for households:
- with at least one Samoan adult;
- with at least one Cook Islands Māori adult;
- with at least one Tongan adult;
- with at least one Niuean adult;
- with at least one NZ-born Pacific adult;
- with at least one Pacific-born Pacific adult;
- in Auckland with at least one Pacific adult;
- in Wellington with at least one Pacific adult;
- in the Rest of the North Island with at least one Pacific adult;
- in the South Island with at least one Pacific adult.
All of this was accompanied by an in-depth qualitative study involving talanoa with 12 Pacific families living in Auckland. They covered a range of different ethnic groups, family types, and household structures, and in content covered household economics, parenting, and family wellbeing. Findings from both of these studies were published in a single book through the New Zealand Families Commission, Pacific Families Now and in the Future.