AVERAGE AGE OF NEW ZEALANDERS IS JUST OVER 32

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 13, 18 July 1949, Page 7

AVERAGE AGE OF NEW ZEALANDERS IS JUST OVER 32

If New Zealanders want to live to a ripe old age, they should go to Otago, for in Otago there are more elderly people than in any other province in the Dominion. This is the obvious deduction from statistical research into the 1945 Census and Statistics Department. Taranaki and Marlborough, on the other hand, have the highest proportion of children under the age of 10.

Probably reflecting housing difficulties and perhaps the presence of greater numbers of reception homes for elderly people, the four principal urban areas of New Zealand have proportionately the smallest numbers of children, while the next ten urban areas, including Wanganui, have proportionately more children than the general average. In its mass of figures, tables and computations, this latest publication shows that there were 24 centenarians in New Zealand when the census was taken. High Maori ages were not recorded, but the oldest European was 105 at that time, fourteen were 99 and 12 were 98. Past records showed that the oldest New Zealand resident on. record was a Tahitian, living in Dunedin in 1874. His age was given as 116, and this is believed to have been reasonably authentic. The next highest age was 109, recorded in 1911. A table which shows the gradual ageing of the community gives the average age in 1945 at 32.94; in 1936 it was 31.69. in 1921 it, was 28.53, and in 1896 it was 25.12.