MSD Annual Report to Parliament Appears to be Full of Errors
November 22, 2022
This is astounding news to me. Māori make up 17 percent of the population nationally but lower percentages in the South Island. For instance, at the last census only 9.4% of the Canterbury population identified as Māori.
When a statistic is so out of whack the obvious recourse is to check it against another source.
MSD regional data for Canterbury June 2022 shows Māori made up just 21.1% of all people on benefits whereas NZ European accounted for 71.2 percent.
The data has been inverted.
But the error isn’t even consistent.
There are eleven regions and tables contained in the annual report.
The data is correct for just three - Northland, Auckland and Waikato.
What surprises me is that even faint familiarity with MSD data would set off alarm bells. It is simply implausible that 77 percent of beneficiaries in the Southern region are Māori.
If that’s wrong what else might be?