KEY POINTS:
A state of the nation report has revealed that life in the regions is getting better - and we can still beat our cousins across the Tasman on some scores.
Gaps between rich and poor New Zealanders have closed in the past five years, largely on the strength of healthy commodity prices which have flowed through to the regions.
Although New Zealanders may be poorer than Australians, we still come out ahead on 10 out of 22 key social indicators in the Ministry of Social Development's annual Social Report.
Perhaps surprisingly, New Zealanders are less obese, more employed, less unemployed, less corrupt, leave school with higher school qualifications, have more access to the internet and trust other people more than Australians.
But it's no surprise that we have lower incomes, more inequality, lower life expectancy and higher suicide rates than our richer neighbours.
We are most behind on the income measure. Our gross domestic product per person in 2005, adjusted for the real buying power of each currency, was only $25,950 - 76 per cent of the Australian equivalent of $34,240.
We are well behind on the proportion of 20- to 29-year-olds in tertiary education - 30 per cent here in 2004, against 32.6 per cent in Australia.
We have more road deaths - 9.9 deaths a year for every 100,000 people in 2005, against 8.1 in Australia.
Australian men live an average of 78.1 years against 77 years in New Zealand, and Australian women live for 83 years against 81.3 years here.
We committed suicide at the rate of 18.7 a year for every 100,000 men and 5.3 for every 100,000 women, against Australian rates of 17.6 for men and 4.7 for women.
But 75.2 per cent of New Zealanders aged 15 to 64 were in paid work last year against only 72.2 per cent of Australians, and the unemployment rate here was 3.8 per cent compared with 4.9 per cent across the Tasman.
Only 20.9 per cent of New Zealanders, compared with 21.7 per cent of Australians, are obese (although these figures are for different years, 2003 in New Zealand and 1999 in Australia).
Almost a third (32.2 per cent) of our MPs are women compared with only a quarter (24.7 per cent) across the Tasman, although Australia's compulsory voting laws mean more people vote there - 92.4 per cent in 2004, 80.9 per cent in our last national election, in 2005).
Perhaps most tellingly, 69 per cent of New Zealanders 15 and over believe "people can usually be trusted".
In Australia, the proportion who trust one another is 54 per cent.
ANZ National Bank economist Cameron Bagrie said the rural regions such as Northland and the Bay of Plenty had been benefiting from booming world commodity prices since 2000, especially for dairy goods.
He said house prices in the regions had also grown more strongly than in the main centres.
Investors' yields fell below 10 per cent in Auckland and Wellington, but low house prices resulted in high yields in smaller towns.
"An awful lot of global money ... has flowed into the regions. A lot of Australian money has flowed in."
High housing prices have pushed up overcrowding in Auckland, which now has the highest proportion of houses with fewer bedrooms than needed for the number of inhabitants (15.7 per cent), but overcrowding has shrunk in Wellington and Nelson.
Internet access and suicide rates are now much more similar in all regions than they were five years ago, although the suicide rates fluctuate widely from year to year.
