evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

New Zealand's 2019 Wellbeing Budget - A Gender-Equity Test Case for Wellbeing-Framed Budgeting

New Zealand · Wellington · See the New Zealand profile · See the Wellington profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 56% 63/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

New Zealand's 2019 Wellbeing Budget was its first built around a wellbeing framework rather than GDP growth, committing NZ$320 million to family and sexual violence prevention. University of Auckland researchers found gender impacts were assessed unevenly across portfolios.

320000000 NZD
Committed to reducing family and sexual violence (2019)
329,000
Individuals/families reached by child-poverty measures (2019)
84 %
Sole-parent households headed by women

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
The Treasury, New Zealand
Period
2019-present (Living Standards Framework ongoing)
Keywords
public finance, budgeting, wellbeing framework, gender equality

Context

In May 2019 New Zealand's Treasury delivered the Wellbeing Budget, the first budget structured around a non-GDP wellbeing framework — the Living Standards Framework — requiring all agencies bidding for new funding to identify the wellbeing impacts of their proposals.

Activities

The budget committed NZ$320 million to reducing family and sexual violence, reformed benefit indexation from inflation to average-wage growth, and introduced child-poverty-reduction measures expected to reach roughly 329,000 individuals and families, a majority of them sole-parent households (84% of which are headed by women).

Results

Researchers at the University of Auckland found the gender analysis was applied unevenly: portfolios such as welfare and family violence incorporated it, but the NZ$300 million Venture Investment Fund and NZ$157 million productivity and technology package carried no visible gender analysis, despite women being only 22% of IT graduates and 23% of the tech workforce.

Conclusions

A wellbeing focus does not automatically produce gender equity without systematic, sex-disaggregated analysis applied consistently across every portfolio, not only the ones seen as women's issues.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Very high (> €5M)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
The Treasury, New Zealand, agency policy teams applying the Living Standards Framework

Conditions for success

  • a wellbeing framework requiring agencies to state wellbeing impacts when bidding for new funding

Common failure modes

  • gender analysis applied unevenly across portfolios — welfare and family violence had it, technology and venture-investment funding did not
  • a wellbeing focus alone does not guarantee systematic, sex-disaggregated analysis

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Similar practices you may find useful