Children's environmental health indicators

Household crowding

• About one in six children aged 0-14 years (16.1%) lived in crowded houses in 2018.

• Around 29,000 children aged 0–14 years were exposed to second-hand smoke in the home in 2015/16.
• Exposure to second-hand smoke for children has decreased considerably from 9.6% in 2006/07 to 3.2% in 2015/16.
• Children living in the most deprived neighbourhoods (NZDep2013 quintile 5) were 18.1 times as likely to be exposed to second-hand smoke in the home than those in the least deprived areas.

• Maternal smoking rates at two weeks postnatal have decreased from 13.7% in 2009 to 7.3% in 2021.
• The gap in smoking rates between Māori mothers and other ethnic groups continues to decrease. Smoking rates among Māori mothers have declined from 32.2% in 2009 to 19.5% in 2021.
• Maternal smoking rates have dropped by more than 30% across most health districts between 2009 and 2021, particularly in Tairāwhiti.

• In 2022/23, around 104,000 children aged 2–14 years were diagnosed with asthma and were currently taking asthma medication.
• There were 7683 hospitalisations in children aged 0–14 years in 2022, the highest since 2001.
• Children under five years old continued to have lower asthma prevalence but higher hospitalisation rates than other age groups. In 2022, the hospitalisation rate among 0–4 year-olds was 14 times higher than that of 10–14-year-olds.
• Māori and Pacific children had a higher asthma prevalence than non-Māori and non-Pacific children in 2022/23. Additionally, Pacific children consistently had higher hospitalisation rates than other children since 2001.
• Asthma prevalence and hospitalisation rates were higher in children living in the most deprived areas (NZDep 2018 quintile 5) than children living in the least deprived areas.
• Children living in main urban areas had higher hospitalisation rates than children living in rural areas in 2022.

• The number of LRTI hospitalisations among 0-4 year olds increased from 9415 in 2021 to 9968 in 2022.
• LRTI hospitalisations during winter returned to pre-COVID levels, but hospitalisations stayed high throughout the remainder of 2022, compared to 2019 levels.
• Infants (under one-year-old) continue to have the highest LRTI hospitalisation rates, but the rate for 1-year-olds (4546.8 per 100,000) was the highest recorded since 2001.
• Pacific children had three times the rate of LRTI hospitalisations as European/Other children in 2022.

• 46 babies died from SUDI in 2019, up from 37 deaths the previous year. There has been no improvement in SUDI rates since 2012.
• Pacific and Māori babies had five times the rate of SUDI as European/Other babies in 2015–19.
• Babies of younger mothers (younger than 25 years) had higher SUDI rates than babies born to mothers in older age groups.
• The SUDI rate for babies living in the most socioeconomically deprived areas (NZdep 2013 quintile 5) was more than seven times as high as babies in the least deprived areas (quintile 1).

• The rate of meningococcal notifications increased slightly from 1.6 per 100,000 in 2020, to 2.6 per 100,000 notifications in 2021.
• Meningococcal B continues to be the most dominant strain in children aged 0–14 years.
• Infants (under 1-year-old) continue to have the highest rate of meningococcal disease since 2001. They had 58 times the rate of meningococcal disease as children aged 10–14 years.
• Māori and Pacific children had three to four times the rate of meningococcal disease than European/Other children.
• Children living in the most deprived areas (NZDep 2018 quintile 5) had five times the rate of meningococcal disease as children living in the least deprived areas (quintile 1).

Active transport to and from school

• In 2020/21, less than half (43.1%) of children aged 5-14 years usually used active transport (such as walking and cycling) to get to and from school. 
• There has been no significant change in the use of active transport among 5-14-year-olds in over 10 years, from 2006/07 to 2020/21.

• In 2019/20, 1.6% of children aged 0-14 years had a medical problem but did not visit a GP due to a lack of transport, in the last 12 months. This is about 15,000 children.
• There has been no significant change in the percentage of children with unmet need for a GP due to a lack of transport between 2011/12(3.0%) and 2019/20.

• In 2016, 12 children aged 0-14 years died from traffic injury, the majority as vehicle occupants (8 deaths).
• The mortality rate for traffic injuries for children remained mostly unchanged between 2010 and 2016.
• In 2019, there were 269 hospitalisations for traffic injuries for children, most of which were for vehicle occupant injuries (56.5%) or pedestrian injuries (25.3%). 
• The overall traffic injury hospitalisation rate for children aged 0-14 years has been stable from 2012 onwards.
• Māori children had traffic injury mortality rates which were three times higher than those of children of other ethnicities and represented 52% of all traffic-related deaths between 2007–16.