By Alexander Gillespie * of 
Alexander Gillespie has assembled a list of some of the most respected global rankings and assessments showing New Zealand's progress compared to other nations, for 2022. Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
Opinion - It's that time of year when school and university students eagerly (or nervously) await their end-of-year results - but also an opportunity to see where the country, in general, might have passed or failed.
Although international and domestic indices and rankings should be read with a degree of caution - measurements and metrics only tell us so much, after all - it's still possible to trace the nation's ups and downs relative to past years.
Good global rankings
Overall, the country held its own internationally when it came to democratic values and standards. Transparency International ranked us top, equal with Denmark and Finland, for being relatively corruption-free.
The Global Peace Index placed New Zealand second best in the world for safety and security, low domestic and international conflict, and degree of militarisation. And human rights and civil liberties watchdog Freedom House again scored New Zealand 99 out of 100 - three Scandinavian countries scored a perfect 100.
On the Index of Moral Freedom (a libertarian think tank that benchmarks countries' levels of "individual freedom regarding ethics and morality"), New Zealand moved to 14th, up five places on 2020.
The Global Gender Gap Report recorded New Zealand holding its position as the fourth-most-gender-equal country. New Zealand stayed in seventh place in the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index. We went up one spot to 13th on the Human Development Index of life expectancy, education and income.
New Zealand also remained sixth best for internet affordability, availability, readiness and relevance, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. And on the Global Innovation Index, we came in at 24th out of 132 economies - two spots better than last year.
Even high-scoring countries on the #CPI2021 are not corruption-free. Over the last decade, anti-corruption efforts have stagnated in almost all countries that earn top marks on the Index and some have started to decline. ➡️ https://t.co/bmfgcDvt46 pic.twitter.com/CeCLNym2R4
— Transparency International (@anticorruption) September 21, 2022
Freedom and happiness
On the other side of the ledger, New Zealand's rankings fell in a variety of political, economic and health indices.
The Index for Economic Freedom, for instance, which covers everything from property rights to financial freedom, placed us fifth, three spots below last year. And we fell three places to 11th in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index.
New Zealanders, it seems, aren't as happy as they were. We fell a place in the World Happiness Report to tenth-cheeriest place - although we're still a bit happier than Australia. The Social Progress Index had us fall from 12th to 15th position, and we dropped 11 spots in the 2022 Global Competitiveness Report, down to 31.
A little surprisingly, New Zealand placed 41st on the Global Terrorism Index, apparently worse than Russia at 44. Although New Zealand recently reduced its terror threat level from medium to low, the 2021 supermarket attack in Auckland and the ongoing fallout from the Christchurch attacks will have affected our ranking.
Also maybe surprisingly, Bloomberg's Covid resilience index, which ranks the "best and worst places to be as the world enters the next Covid phase", placed New Zealand at 35. This was possibly due to the Omicron wave and increase in deaths since reopening borders, rather than a verdict on the country's overall response.
And New Zealand continues to struggle environmentally, falling from 19th to 26th on the 2022 Yale Environmental Performance Index, which measures environmental health and ecosystem vitality.
While our overall assessment on the Climate Action Tracker (which measures progress on meeting agreed global warming targets) has not changed, it is still categorised as "highly insufficient". The Climate Change Performance Index is a little more generous, pegging New Zealand at 33rd, up two spots on last year.
Consumer price inflation in New Zealand in the second quarter of 2022 accelerated to a new recent high in year-on-year terms. Could the economy tip into recession? https://t.co/5tRX9wnfR1 pic.twitter.com/FgpBZxQK11
— Economist Intelligence: EIU (@TheEIU) September 2, 2022
Mixed news on the home front
Domestically, New Zealand recorded better-than-expected results on four fronts:
- unemployment hit a very low 3.3 percent in September, better than most comparable OECD countries.
- median weekly earnings from wages and salaries rose by 8.8 percent to $NZ1189, the largest increase recorded since records began in 1998
- suicides decreased in the year to June to 538, down from 607 the year before and significantly lower than the average rate over the past 13 years
- incarceration rates continued to fall, with a prisoner population of 7728 (as of June), well down on the near 10,000 figure from 2020
On the other hand, inflation is rising. While lower than October's OECD average, an annual rate of 7.2 percent is still high by recent standards. Related to this, and either good or bad news according to your perspective, annual average house price growth slowed to 5.5 percent in the year to June. Real prices are expected to drop considerably from their 2021 peak, however.
Those falls don't necessarily make houses affordable for many people, although the stock of public housing continues to increase by over 500 dwellings each year to a recent total of 76,834. Even so, demand for social housing is still growing. Recent research suggests one in six New Zealanders have been homeless, and about 41,000 do not have adequate access to housing.
Rich and poor
New Zealand's poverty rate compares poorly with other OECD countries, and child poverty remains a critical challenge. However, in the year to June 2021, the percentage of children living in poor households had declined since 2018.
Uneven wealth distribution continues to be a factor in New Zealand's economy Photo: 123rf
At the other end of the scale, the wealthy continue to hold the lion's share of assets. The top 10 percent of households hold about 50 percent of the nation's total household net worth (the value of a household's assets, such as real estate, retirement savings and shares, less its debts). Conversely, the lowest 20 percent hold just 1 percent of total household assets, but 11 percent of total liabilities.
In short, while New Zealand can claim some bragging rights in many important areas and is making modest progress in others, that's far from the whole picture. Any progress we make should not be taken for granted.
The final verdict has to be: a good effort, but room for improvement.
* Alexander Gillespie is a professor of law at the University of Waikato
* This article first appeared on The Conversation.
