Children's environmental health indicators

Household crowding

• About one in seven children aged 0-14 years (15.9%) lived in crowded houses in 2013.

• 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 8.6% in 2020.
• Māori mothers had higher smoking rates than other ethnic groups between 2009 and 2020. However, smoking rates among Māori mothers have declined from 32.3% in 2009 to 23.0% in 2020. 

• Asthma hospitalisations in children aged 0–14 years have increased by more than 50% in 2021 after a substantial drop the previous year.
• Asthma hospitalisations declined after COVID-19 lockdown periods in 2020 and 2021.
• The highest asthma hospitalisation rates were in children 0-4 years, Pacific children, and children living in the most deprived areas.  
• Asthma prevalence in children aged 2–14 years in 2020/21 has declined from previous years.
• The prevalence of asthma has declined in children 2–4 years (6.0%) in 2020/21, the lowest since 2011/12.
• Māori and Pacific children were more likely to have medicated asthma than non-Māori children and non-Pacific children, respectively.

• Marked reduction in LRTI hospitalisations in 0–4 year olds coincided with the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020.
• The usual winter LRTI hospitalisation peak was down by 85% in 2020.

• 38 babies died from SUDI (0.6 per 1,000 live births) in 2018, down from 48 deaths (0.8 per 1,000 live births) the previous year.
• Pacific and Māori babies had five times the rate of SUDI as European/Other babies in 2014–18. 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 (NZDep2013 quintile 5) was six times as high as babies in the least deprived areas (quintile 1).

• The number of meningococcal notifications dropped from 67 in 2019, to 16 in 2020.
• Meningococcal Group B continues to be the most dominant strain in children.
• Infants (under 1 year -year-old) continue to have the highest rate of meningococcal disease since 2001. They had 35 times the rate of meningococcal disease as children aged 10–14 years in 2018–20.
• The highest notification rates were in infants, Māori children, Pacific children, and children living in the most deprived areas.  

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.