The past 20 years have seen enormous changes in New Zealand. This book presents trends of change in everyday life, at home and in the community, at school and at work. It uses a lifestyle framework to cover all stages of life from infancy to retirement. As well as by age, it provides analyses by gender and ethnicity to highlight differences between the experiences of groups within society. Significant trends which are tracked include changes in household composition and living arrangements, legal and social marital status, home ownership, working patterns of parents, household and personal incomes, paid and unpaid work, life-long education, health status and hospital use.

All this information is presented in a clear and accessible form, with numerous graphs and illustrative tables. As well as analysing the trends and commenting on their policy implications, the book aso directs readers to other source of information, in hard copy and electronic form. It will be of use to policy-makers at all levels, to researchers and planners, to teachers, nurses, social workers and other professionals, as well as to students at secondary and tertiary levels.

This is the fifth volume in the social monitoring series begun by the New Zealand Planning Council in 1985. It presents information from five census dates – 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996 ans 2001 – spanning two decades. As with the previous From Birth to Death reports, the strength of this new work is its integrated approach. Rarely is so much information on the lives of ordinary New Zealanders brought together in so handy a form.