Monitoring the Changing Social Conditions of New Zealanders

Charles Crothers

An agenda for developing a systematic, comprehensive and coherent set of annual social indicators using available statistics is advanced. Such indicators would allow the changing social conditions of New Zealanders to be regularly monitored.

A preliminary attempt is essayed to assemble and display such indicators using the more readily available of such statistics. Trends are identified and the theoretical and methodological foundations are laid for the possible construction of interrelated models, which would show how different domains of social life influence each other. It is advocated that institutional arrangements be set up to provide adequately contextualised interpretative accounts of such time-series, including attention to inter-relationships amongst domains and policy implications.