Median age in New Zealand
The median age in New Zealand is 37.5 years (2024): half the population is older, half younger. That is 6.9 years older than the world median of 30.6, and makes New Zealand the 54th oldest of 193 countries.
Key numbers
New Zealand among its neighbours
In plain language
Line up everyone in New Zealand by age. The person in the middle is 37.5. That is the median: it says nothing about how old the oldest are or how many babies were born last year, only where the midpoint falls.
A median of 37.5 is older than the world's 30.6. For scale, the youngest country here, Central African Republic, has a median of 14.4 and the oldest, Japan, 49.4. Life expectancy at birth in New Zealand is 82.1 years, so a person at the median age has, on a rough reckoning, about 44.6 years ahead of them.
The 2024figure is the UN's medium-variant number; its estimates end in 2023. For a year this close the projection barely differs from an estimate, since everyone counted has already been born.
Questions
- What is the median age in New Zealand?
- 37.5 years in 2024, by the UN World Population Prospects 2024. Half of the people in New Zealand are younger than 37.5 and half are older. The median is not the average age; it is the midpoint, so a handful of very old people do not move it.
- Is New Zealand's population young or old?
- Older than most. New Zealand is 6.9 years above the world median of 30.6, and ranks 54th oldest of the 193 countries here. The youngest country, Central African Republic, has a median of 14.4; the oldest, Japan, 49.4.
- How does New Zealand compare to Mauritius?
- Mauritius has a median age of 37.4, 0.1 years younger than New Zealand. The two sit next to each other in the ranking, at 140th and 139th youngest.
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Compare your age in New ZealandAlso by country: Average height by country, Average BMI by country, Life expectancy by country and Average income by country.