The past fifteen years have seen enormous social and economic 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 lifecycle framework to cover all stages of life from infancy to retirement, and also 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 nuremous graphs and tables. As well as analysing the trends, the book draws on recent research findings from a range of sources to help explain the changes documented, and also comment on their policy implications. The book 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 schools.

This is the fourth volume in the social montoring series begun by the New Zealand Planning Council in 1985 and continued by Judith Davey of Victoria University of Wellington. It presents information from four census dates – 1981, 1986, 1991 and 1996 – now covering fifteen years and adding an Asian group to its ethnic analysis. As with the previous From Birth to Death reports, the strength of this work is in its integrated approach. Rarely is so much information on the lives of ordinary New Zealanders brought together in so handy a form.