Diseases cost working NZers almost $4 billion in income every year

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-12-01 06:00

Australia; New Zealand; International

PHOTO: Towfiqu Barbhuiya/Unsplash

NZ and international researchers have looked at how receiving a disease diagnosis can affect a New Zealander’s income. The team looked at 40 conditions along with income tax data, finding that the combined annual income loss from all diseases among adults was about 4.3 per cent of total income, or nearly $4 billion NZD. Income loss in the year of someone being diagnosed was highest for dementia (nearly $9k for men, and $7k for women), followed by mental illness. Cancers tended to have the highest income losses for the last year of life.

Media release

From:

Expert Reaction

These comments have been collated by the Science Media Centre to provide a variety of expert perspectives on this issue. Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Views expressed are the personal opinions of the experts named. They do not represent the views of the SMC or any other organisation unless specifically stated.

Dr Anja Mizdrak is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Otago (Wellington).

Being diagnosed with a disease disrupts peoples’ lives in many ways, including impacting on incomes.

We looked at how much incomes dropped (on average) following diagnosis of a range of different diseases by linking NZ health and tax datasets.

Diseases cause substantial income loss in working age adults; equivalent to 4.3% of the income of the working age population.

Income loss following diagnosis varied across different conditions and was highest for dementia and mental illness.

Last updated: 26 Nov 2021 11:25am

Contact information

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.

Declared conflicts of interest Dr Mizdrak is funded by the Health Research Council (various projects).

Journal/
conference: PLOS Medicine

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of Melbourne, University of Otago, University of Washington, USA; University of Oxford, UK

Funder: The BODE3 Programme is funded by New Zealand Health Research Council (10/248, 16/443) and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (UOOX1406). Authors funded by these grants include TB, FS, MI, AM, LM and NW. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Media Contact/s

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.