New Zealand has a diverse and multicultural society. Majority of population is constituted by Europeans with approximately 77%, 15% of the population is constituted by Maori, 7 percent by Polynesian, 9 percent of Asians and 1 percent other population. (say Asians are mainly from India and China) Thus New Zealand welcomes variety of ethnic people in its wonderful land of nature. People settled in NZ are from various countries like UK, Europe, India, China, Philippines. The number of people with multiple ethnic identities is increasing. Younger people are far more likely to identify with more than one ethnicity than older people.

Population size and distribution

New Zealand has population of around 4.3 million population.

Over three-quarters (76 per cent) of the population live in the North Island and one-third (33 per cent) in the Auckland region. The Maori population is heavily concentrated in the North Island (87 per cent) but only 24 per cent of Maori lived in the Auckland region at the 2006 Census. The New Zealand population is highly urbanised. As per 2006 Census, 86 per cent of the population was living in an urban area.

The main contributing countries to the net migration gain in 2008 were the United Kingdom (7,800), India (5,200), the Phillippiness (3,700), South Africa and Fiji (each 2,800) and China 2,600. United Kindgdom has been the New Zealand's leading net source of migrants since 2004.

Over half of all New Zealanders (53%) live in the four main urban areas of Auckland (1,313,200), Hamilton (197,300), Wellington (381,900) and Christchurch (382,200). Auckland has 33 percent of the total New Zealand population and the fastest growing city in the country attracting large number of migrants. The resident population of South Island has reached one million for the first time in 2007. South Islands Canterbury region was the second fastest growing region after Auckland. The estimated resident population of the South Island reached 1,008,400 in 2007, exceeding one million for the first time. The population of the South Island was estimated at 1,017,300 as at 30 June 2008. The South Island's Canterbury region was the second fastest-growing region after Auckland.

The population is heavily concentrated in the northern half of the North Island (52%), with the remaining population evenly spread between the southern half of the North Island (24%) and the South Island (24%).