Gambling problems
From Stuff
New Zealanders are the world’s fourth-biggest gamblers per capita, new figures show.
The figures come from H2 Gambling Capital, an international gaming research agency, and have been published in the Economist magazine.
This is unusually accurate for a ‘top in the world’ story, the only quibbles being that the data were actually published in one of the Economist blogs, and the data is on gambling in New Zealand, not on gambling by New Zealanders — it includes gambling by tourists.
More worrying is the last sentence of the story
The Ministry of Health reports that most New Zealand gamblers are recreational gamblers, with about 0.3 per cent of the population at risk of “problem gambling”.
In fact, the Ministry of Health reports that about 0.3% of the population are actually problem gamblers, “gambling at levels that are leading to negative consequences”, with another 1% at moderate risk.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »