How much does the government spend per person?
Government spending per person was $26,607 (The Treasury (New Zealand) and Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa; NZ in Numbers calculation, 2024/25).
Updated
Government spending, tax revenue and net government debt divided by New Zealand's estimated resident population at 30 June, the end of each government financial year. Dollars are not adjusted for inflation.
Starts in 1995/96, the first year of the population series used. Not adjusted for inflation; see the inflation-adjusted government finances for real terms.
Dividing a national total by population puts it on a human scale. Spending per person is an average across the country; the amount spent on each person varies with their circumstances.
Read the period beside each number before comparing it with another figure. A monthly observation, a quarterly result and a financial year cover different spans of time. The latest release can also revise earlier observations. The chart and downloads keep the published periods so you can check which figures are being compared. A change in spending describes what happened during that period; it does not by itself explain why it happened or identify the effect of a government policy. Definitions and coverage matter as much as the size of a change.
Government spending per person was $26,276 in 2023/24, a year earlier.
The earliest observation on the same basis was $10,803 in 2004/05.
Spending: definitions
Government spending, tax revenue and net government debt divided by New Zealand's estimated resident population at 30 June, the end of each government financial year. Dollars are not adjusted for inflation.
- Starts in 1995/96, the first year of the population series used.
- Not adjusted for inflation; see the inflation-adjusted government finances for real terms.
- Expenses and revenue are for the whole year; the population is at year end (30 June), which slightly understates per-person amounts in fast-growing years.
- Accounting basis breaks in the Treasury series carry through (shown as breaks).
Show the figures
| Period | Core Crown expenses per person (NZ$) |
|---|---|
| 2024/25 | $26,607 |
| 2023/24 | $26,276 |
| 2022/23 | $24,533 |
| 2021/22 | $24,724 |
| 2020/21 | $21,194 |
| 2019/20 | $21,456 |
| 2018/19 | $17,496 |
| 2017/18 | $16,442 |
| 2016/17 | $15,859 |
| 2015/16 | $15,683 |
| 2014/15 | $15,699 |
| 2013/14 | $15,759 |
| 2012/13 | $15,750 |
| 2011/12 | $15,639 |
| 2010/11 | $15,990 |
| 2009/10 | $14,608 |
| 2008/09 | $14,808 |
| 2007/08 | $13,323 |
| 2006/07 | $12,729 |
| 2005/06 | $11,730 |
Fiscal years. Year ended 31 March to 1989, year ended 30 June from 1990 (the April–June 1989 quarter falls between the two).. Source: The Treasury (New Zealand) and Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa; NZ in Numbers calculation. Lines break at basis changes and missing periods.
Spending: questions for your AI
Download the data, attach it in your assistant, then paste the prompt.
The attached CSV is government spending, tax and debt per person, from The Treasury (New Zealand) and Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa; NZ in Numbers calculation. Answer: How much does the government spend per person? Name the unit and period. Use only directly supported observations. Definitions: government spending, tax revenue and net government debt divided by New Zealand's estimated resident population at 30 June, the end of each government financial year. Dollars are not adjusted for inflation. Limits: Starts in 1995/96, the first year of the population series used. Not adjusted for inflation; see the inflation-adjusted government finances for real terms. Expenses and revenue are for the whole year; the population is at year end (30 June), which slightly understates per-person amounts in fast-growing years. Accounting basis breaks in the Treasury series carry through (shown as breaks).
More questions about spending
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Spending: sources
The source publication, licence and snapshot used to build this page.
Calculated by NZ in Numbers from The Treasury (New Zealand), Fiscal Time Series – Historical Fiscal Indicators; Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa, Population estimates: New Zealand estimated resident population at 30 June.
- Organisation
- The Treasury (New Zealand) and Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa; NZ in Numbers calculation, NZ in Numbers calculation
- Licence
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Calculated by NZ in Numbers from the source datasets listed; please also credit those sources.
- Snapshot
- SHA256
- a88edc730fc280641f1742eb902179d8f438d5392dfc6e8d63b231f9bda604f5
- Retrieved
- 11 October 2026
- Formula
- Per person ($) = Treasury figure ($ million) × 1,000,000 ÷ estimated resident population at 30 June of the same financial year
- Inputs
- core-crown-expenses, core-crown-expenses.nzd-m. Source: The Treasury (New Zealand), Fiscal Time Series – Historical Fiscal Indicators. Content hash: b370468849b560f610e3b3661752f4a4dc61ff1741d62246b4e603d0ccd02af0.
- population, population.3.999999.RC9999. Source: Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa, Population estimates: New Zealand estimated resident population at 30 June. Content hash: f46bb14bb0d00f405d3e636d6b8f7d09a3833e9863488f3864b2376f7a631382.
- core-crown-tax-revenue, core-crown-tax-revenue.nzd-m. Source: The Treasury (New Zealand), Fiscal Time Series – Historical Fiscal Indicators. Content hash: 89c761693e9cfaa9e97c530b8c8616802fb5dffb25f003910c65c720b1a41f90.
- net-core-crown-debt, core-crown-net-debt.nzd-m. Source: The Treasury (New Zealand), Fiscal Time Series – Historical Fiscal Indicators. Content hash: 73fbdec799345fc0e765c9958aee39215d21b385cb1b3bf899bf5d222ddeb93b.