Written By: - Date published: 12:43 pm, September 22nd, 2008 - 43 comments
Categories: im/migration, national, slippery, spin -
Tags:
It’s really easy to present misleading statistics. David Farrar shows how it’s done with a post on migration today.
Note how his figures only go back to 2003. Why is that? Well, it just so happens that 2003 was the last low point in the migration cycle. So, if you show just the last five years, you get a nice appearance of net emigration by NZ citizens growing very rapidly. But it’s only due to lack of context. Another trick Farrar uses is to show just the number of people leaving, not adjusting it for population growth by presenting the figures as a % of the population. 40,000 looks like a lot but not when you know it’s 1% of the population. And because the population is growing it’s to be expected that the number of people leaving each year will also grow. But that doesn’t fit the myth National is trying to create. So, they remove context again and rely on their audience’s ignorance. I don’t think that’s a great way to conduct politics. So, in the graph below, I’ve gone back as far as the figures do, to 1979, and adjusted for inflation. We see a cycle of migration, not the unprecedented acceleration Farrar and National want us to see.
sources (migration, population, 2008 mig/pop)
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SP
I made a valid point that the initial criticism was about the time period and you haven’t compared like against like with respect to this.
However, I did miss the fact that you had noted the % issue in the second part of your paragraph – I assumed it was a discussion of the original statement.
It would certainly have been interesting to see TWO graphs – one showing the raw data, the other as a %.
As noted above, the current levels are at historical highs which indicates that we should be concerned with no evidence that the trend has yet reversed.
New Zealand is a nation that exports things including poeple and has done so since its beginning. Its what economists call the residual. Trust the nats to try and eceptionalise the migration figures. They (the nats) could be a modern version of chicken little only they keep running round after their heads have been cut off.
Has any one else been unable to view kiwiblog if you dont allow it to install something to your computer?
just to check Spam.. you think it’s OK for National to make misleading arguments if someone else does it too?
You obviously think that it is, or you wouldn’t post them yourselves.
And then you post about how others are misleading with theirs’. Hypocrisy?
Steve,
I couldn’t find the information on citizens, but the proportion of people in the census who were born overseas has gone from 17.5% in ’96 to 19.5 in ’01 to 22.9 in ’06. I suspect many of them aren’t citizens.
As I said above, not sure if that would skew these numbers at all. I just wondered in light of your choice of percentages as citizens relative to population.
Hmmmm, the more I think about it….
the title reminds me of that infamous line by Theresa Gattunng just before her leaving Telecom. she also said Telecom was relying on the IT ignorance of its customers to make large profits.
woo this is such a joke.. deleting my post doesn’t prove u right
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10538926
Aussie exodus highest level for 30 years
4:00PM Wednesday Oct 22, 2008
Figures published today by Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) showed about 47,200 people left New Zealand for Australia on a permanent or long term (PLT) basis during the year to September. About 13,200 came the other way.
The resulting net PLT outflow to Australia of around 33,900 was the highest for any 12-month period since monthly figures started to be compiled in April 1978, SNZ said.
so what. why do people wnat to hang around with the likes of you?