Gap between NZ's rich and poor wide

The gulf between rich and poor is still wide, with a high degree of inequality, the author of a study ranking New Zealand's richest and poorest areas says.

Milford, Crinan in Invercargill and South Dunedin are the three poorest areas in the South Island, the latest atlas of socio-economic deprivation shows.

The Ministry of Health atlas uses information from the 2006 census to rank 1792 areas across the country, using eight types of deprivation, including income, home ownership, family support, employment, qualifications and transport.

The Christchurch suburbs of Aranui, Linwood, Phillipstown and Waltham are in the poorest 10 per cent, while Cashmere, Holmwood, Deans Bush, Mount Pleasant, Moncks Bay, Governors Bay and Rolleston are among the richest.

The atlas grades them from 10 (most deprived) to one (least deprived), the opposite of the school decile system.

Lead author Professor Peter Crampton, the dean and head of campus at Otago University's Wellington campus, said little had changed since he put out the first index of deprivation in 1991, with the gap between poor and rich just as large.

"The general patterns have not changed whatsoever," he said.

"The difference between rich and poor is absolutely still there. In New Zealand, there's a very high degree of inequality."

The index is used for the application of funding formulas for health services by district health boards and is designed to help health planners, policy-makers and researchers.

"Health patterns follow very closely the pattern of poverty," Crampton said.

"So if you're a health planner, you know where the work will come from. The old cliche that poverty is bad for your health is very true."

Aranui's fourth-worst ranking in the atlas did not shock Aranui Community Trust chairman Rob Davidson.

The trust had recently done its own needs analysis and came up with similar findings.

"It doesn't surprise me that's the case," he said. "It is an area of high deprivation."

Davidson said that five years ago the trust identified a lack of access to services as an issue for the area and had worked hard to remedy that with the Heartland Service Centre, run by the trust under contract to the Ministry of Social Development.

The centre housed government services, health nurses, social workers and Housing New Zealand.

"So all the services are taken care of, but it doesn't address the issues of under-achievement in education, low incomes and all these sorts of things which still persist," Davidson said.

"Although one would have thought that with more people in work it would have made a difference, but it hasn't."

He said the trust's latest strategic plan aimed to target the lack of education.

"In the next five years we want to change mindsets, encouraging people into education and to remain engaged in education," he said.

"That's the key that and healthy living."

Crampton said it was important to realise the atlas was relative, so there would always be a bottom 10 per cent, even if standards of living were rising.

- © Fairfax NZ News