Modelling social change in New Zealand: Social Simulation Applied to a Census 'test-bed' (MoSC)

A three-year research project funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund. Recently developed computer-based simulation techniques were applied to census data on cohabitation to test a model of New Zealand’s social structure in the rapidly changing demographic and economic conditions of the period 1981–2001.

The central research question was whether the social structure – as reflected in the distribution of matching socioeconomic and ethnic choices of co-habitation partner across households – became more highly stratified and segregated over this period. The census provides data on these dimensions of social stratification that are both fully representative and available at five-yearly intervals.

The project established the census as a potential ‘test-bed’ for future modelling research, trialled new simulation techniques, addressed some theoretical considerations (choice or constraint in cohabitation?), and tested a hypothesis about New Zealand’s changing social structure.