At that stage, New Zealand was home to around 1.4 million people.
It took 35 more years for the global population to reach three billion, with each subsequent rise of a billion taking just 10 to 15 years.
Aotearoa’s population also continued to grow, reaching three million in 1973, and four million 30 years later.
Following a period of rapid population growth from 2013, driven by net migration, New Zealand’s population ticked over the five million mark in March of 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic began shutting the world down.
It was the fastest million in the country’s history - taking just 17 years to grow from a population of four million people in 2003.
Our 5 million on a planet of 8 billion
The latest provisional numbers available from Stats NZ show New Zealand’s estimated resident population at June 30 was 5,124,100, an increase of 0.06 per cent - or 3300 people - on the previous quarter.
There were slightly fewer males (2,542,800) than females (2,581,200) in the country and the median age of the females was also slightly higher, at 39.1 years, compared with the median male age of 37.0.
Those aged 15-39 were the largest cohort, numbering 1,730,100 people, with the 1,589,500 people aged 40-64 making up the second-largest group.
There were fewer than a million people in each of the age groupings of the youngest and oldest people in the country, with 964,300 aged 0-14 and 840,200 in the 65+ age bracket.
During the year ended June 30, New Zealand’s population grew by 12,700 people - or 0.2 per cent, a number demographer professor Paul Spoonley told RNZ in an interview this month was below the OECD average of 0.6 per cent.
Professor Paul Spoonley of Massey University. Photo / Doug Sherring
Notably, all of that growth was attributed to natural increase (births, minus deaths) - a stark contrast to the years 2014 - 2020, when net migration was a significant component of New Zealand’s population growth.
“We’ve still got more births than deaths, and that’s keeping us in the positive territory,” Spoonley said, “but we’re getting down there and the most recent statistics show that we’re only growing at 0.2 per cent at the moment, because we’re seeing that uptick of the net migration loss.”
Prior to the pandemic, New Zealand had one of the highest population growth rates of OECD countries, at 2.1 per cent, Spoonley told RNZ in an earlier interview.
But that growth had “rapidly collapsed” as border closures put the brakes on migration, he said.
So while the global population may be soaring, the picture is not the same everywhere.
There are no nations in Africa experiencing population decline and just eight countries are projected to be responsible for more than half the world’s population increase by 2050.
Elsewhere, falling fertility rates, combined with low net migration, have already seen some countries’ populations decline.
New Zealand’s birth rate over the pandemic had mirrored what was seen globally, Spoonley told RNZ in June, with births dropping in 2020 but then picking up again in 2021.
However, that rebound did not seem to have changed a longer-term trend of fewer births in Aotearoa, with Spoonley noting the birth rate had not exceeded 60,000 since dropping below that level in 2016.
“It’s hovering around 58-59,000 and I think long-term, this rebound aside, we will see an ongoing decline in the birth rate.”
New Zealand’s fertility rate had decreased around 20 per cent in the past decade, to about 1.6 children per woman, Spoonley told The Detail last year, well below the population replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.
Stats NZ has projected it will take the country longer to hit its next million - somewhere between 20 and 30 years - due to lower projected birth rates and an ageing population.
