Demographics of New Zealand Demographics of New Zealand The demographics of New Zealand encompass the gender, ethnic, religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds of the million people living in New Zealand. New Zealanders, informally known as "Kiwis", predominantly live in urban areas on the North Island. The five largest cities are Auckland (with one-third of the country's population), Christchurch (in the South Island, the largest island of the New Zealand archipelago), Wellington, Hamilton and Tauranga. Few New Zealanders live on New Zealand's smaller islands. Waiheke Island (near Auckland) is easily the most populated smaller island with residents, while Great Barrier Island, the Chatham and Pitt
Wellington Region the lowest percentage of machinery operators and drivers (4.1%) and the lowest percentage of labourers (7.1%). The region is second only to Auckland in many statistics related to breadth of ethnicity. In the 2006 census Wellington had the second-highest Asian population (8.4%, Auckland 18.9%) and the second-highest Pacific Islander population (8.0%, Auckland 14.4%). Around 25.3 percent of the Wellington region's population was born overseas, second only to Auckland (39.1 percent) and on par with the New Zealand average (25.2 percent). The British Isles is the largest region of origin, accounting for 36.5 percent of the overseas-born population in the region.