Household experience of gambling-related harm by socio-economic deprivation in New Zealand: increases in inequality between 2008 and 2012

Abstract

Although problem gamblers make up a small proportion of the New Zealand population, those who are living in more deprived areas at higher risk of harm from their own or someone else's gambling. The global financial crisis in 2008 has been linked with changes in gambling behaviour and with increases in inequality between areas of relative deprivation. Nationally representative datasets from in-home face-to-face health surveys in 2008, 2010 and 2012 were analysed to investigate changes in gambling behaviour, experiences of household-level harm related to gambling, and the association with economic deprivation. Although overall gambling participation had dropped, the experience of gambling harm at the household level was significantly higher in 2012 compared with 2008 and 2010. The increase in harm was experienced disproportionately by those in more deprived areas, who were 4.5 times as likely to experience gambling-related arguments or money problems. We consider possible explanations including more harmful gambling behaviour as a response to financial stresses, decreasing household resilience to financial stresses, and the concentration of more harmful forms of gambling product in more deprived areas. Causes of gambling harm in deprived communities, and the vulnerability of households in these communities, should be addressed if inequalities are to be reduced.

Keywords:

• New Zealand
• gambling
• public health
• vulnerable populations
• social harm

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the work of past Health Sponsorship Council staff members and expert advisors from other agencies who worked on the design of the gambling questionnaire in the Health and Lifestyles Surveys.

Funding

Funding for the surveys was provided by the Ministry of Health.

Notes

^1. The New Zealand Gambling Act 2003 broadly defines gambling harm as: harm or distress of any kind arising from, or caused or exacerbated by, a person's gambling; and includes personal, social, or economic harm suffered by the person; or the person's spouse, civil union partner, de facto partner, family, whanau, or wider community; or in the workplace; or by society at large (Part 1, s.4).

^2. NZDep2006 is an area-based index of deprivation that measures the level of socioeconomic deprivation for each neighbourhood (meshblock). It was created using nine variables from the 2006 Census: income, benefit receipt, transport (access to car), household crowding, home ownership, employment status, qualifications, support (sole-parent families), and access to a telephone (Salmond, Crampton, & Atkinson, 2007).

^3. The forms of gambling included in the survey were: Lotto, Instant Kiwi, Keno or Bullseye tickets (all New Zealand Lotteries products), raffle tickets or casino fundraising evening, horse or dog races, gaming machines at pubs or clubs, gaming machines at casinos, sports betting, table games at casino, housie or bingo for money, games for money on a mobile phone and Internet gambling through overseas websites.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Danny Tu

Danny Tu is a statistician and researcher who has been working at the HPA since late 2007. He has a postgraduate diploma in science, majoring in statistics and operations research at Victoria University of Wellington. His interests include quantitative research, survey sampling techniques and biostatistics, statistical programming, data management and generalizing programmes and systems, especially using STATA.

Rebecca J. Gray

Rebecca Gray is a researcher at the HPA and a PhD student in public health at the University of Otago. She holds an MA (Applied) in social science research from Victoria University of Wellington and has worked on the development and evaluations of HPA campaigns aiming to minimize harm from gambling.

Darren K. Walton

Darren Walton is the manager of the Research and Evaluation Unit at the HPA. He is an applied psychologist and is responsible for the overall direction of the unit's research into public health behaviours including gambling.