Social Cohesion in New Zealand 2026

You can visit the landing page for this report here. You can see last year's Social Cohesion report here.

Social cohesion is the foundation on which a community or nation can navigate complexity and challenges. This is the premise of our social cohesion research programme.

New Zealand faces multiple long-term challenges including geopolitical turbulence, climate change, ageing population, and stagnant productivity. Our ability to navigate this complexity and challenging decisions require both excellent technical policy and good social cohesion for the right solutions to endure.

We surveyed 2,882 people in late 2025, asking the same questions as last year, and included a new module on social media. It is larger than usual surveys, to ensure representative samples for ethnic breakdowns.

The results are hopeful and disappointing in equal measure.

Hopeful, because there are still strong pillars of cohesion that bind us together. Over 80% of us are taking pride in the New Zealand way of life and culture, and there is a sense of belonging in New Zealand, consistently held across the country, for local and foreign born. Our young people are more aspirational than older people (although they also experience worse social cohesion outcomes).

These are strong foundations that need to be harnessed to create local community investment, which has fallen.

Disappointing, because cohesion has slipped across all dimensions, with notable declines in belief that hard work brings a better life, a fair go for all, and trust in government and courts. There have been sharp drops in institutional legitimacy.
Attitudes towards immigrants are worsening, mirroring a similar decline in Australia recently. However, we also found that contact reduces prejudice.

The experience of social cohesion is not uniform. We found three distinct groups: 30% are connected, who experience high cohesion across all dimensions; 41% are ambivalent, who experience middling cohesion and low participation; and 28% are alienated, where they are disconnected from traditional civic and social connections, but are often engaged in protest, online and other activities.

Financial stress, political alliance, institutional distrust, and social isolation reinforce each other. They produce a population that is frustrated and disconnecting from the conventional institutions we rely on for collective decision-making.

But the data also points to what works. Contact with people from different backgrounds consistently predicts stronger belonging and more accepting attitudes. Even among those struggling financially, a strong sense of belonging keeps people participating in their communities. Young New Zealanders are
more aspirational than any other age group, even though their lived experience of cohesion is the worst.

These are foundations we can build on, if we choose to invest in them.

The report explores where the cracks are deepest, what the evidence says about closing them, and what we are learning from communities and practitioners doing this work.

This year, we also analysed the UK policy community's social cohesion action space, looking at what the UK has pursued to improve its social cohesion. You can download that supplementary report here.