Making Aotearoa a better place to call home: Growing Up in New Zealand Impact Report

Since 2009, Growing Up has followed the lives of more than 6,000 young New Zealanders and their families. As the participating caregivers were recruited while their children were in utero, the study’s connections with these young people’s lives date back to before their birth. In the intervening 15 years, Growing Up researchers have returned regularly to these families, asking them to share an exceptionally detailed account of their lives that covers not just their health and wellbeing but also their children’s cognitive development, the functioning of their whānau, and the wider context of their neighbourhood. This research has already generated over one million data points.

In addition to this wealth of detail, Growing Up’s children are the most representative group of young New Zealanders ever selected for a longitudinal study: their socio-economic and ethnic make-up are the Aotearoa population in miniature. These features make Growing Up an unrivalled treasure trove of data about how our young people live, whether or not they are thriving – and what can be done to improve their prospects.

This impact report highlights some of the striking insights already yielded by Growing Up data and there impacts on New Zealand policy-making/development.