Research

Natalie Jackson is a member of several academic research programmes. She is currently a Key Researcher on the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) project CaDDANZ – ‘Capturing the Diversity Dividend of Aotearoa New Zealand’, a collaboration between research teams at the University of Waikato, Massey University, and Motu. Natalie's role, with colleague Dr Lars Brabyn from the University of Waikato, is to build an online Social Atlas of New Zealand, featuring maps and supporting research which illustrate the spatial nature of New Zealand's demographic, social and economic diversity - especially that relating to migration. The project runs until 2020.

Recently completed, between 2014 and 2017 Natalie led a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden project entitled ‘The subnational ending of population growth – towards a theory of depopulation’, the Maori interpretation of which is Tai Timu Tangata Taiho e? (translated: what will the ebbing of the human tide mean for the people?). The main findings from this report are summarised in a Supplementary Issue of Policy Quarterly, Vol 13, available online. This project focused on the drivers of subnational population change across the period 1976-2013 and projected to 2043, and shows that New Zealand's population growth will almost certainly slow as the population ages, even with sizeable levels of migration.

Natalie is also a consultant researcher on a National Science Challenge 'Ageing Well' project: Independence and Housing Tenure, led by Dr Kay Saville Smith of CRESA. Natalie contributes her expertise in cohort analysis to the 'Life When Renting' subproject. 

Links to related research along with other projects undertaken by Natalie are below.