Determinants of Ethnic Identity among Adolescents: Evidence from New Zealand

Auckland, New Zealand, is among the most ethnically diverse cities in the world. Like most large cities, its population is also quite youthful. In this paper, we focus on the dynamics of self-declared ethnic identities of adolescents in Auckland, by using New Zealand Linked Census data for four inter-censal periods between 1991 and 2013. Our dataset links the same young person across two consecutive Censuses (that is, those aged 13-17 in one Census are aged 18-22 in the following Census five years later). We aim to capture the first conscious ethnic identity affiliation of adolescents, assuming that their ethnic identities are initially recorded by their parents, but subsequently determined by the adolescent themselves when they transition to adulthood. We classify our predictor variables into individual, family and neighbourhood-level variables. We find that an adolescent’s ethnicity stated at the previous census, parents’ ethnicity, and the ethnic makeup of the neighbourhood are all major determinants of ethnic-identity choices among adolescents in Auckland.