23 Jan 2016

Kiwis are scattered far and wide

4:13 pm on 23 January 2016

We may be few but the reach of Kiwis extends far beyond our Pacific home, with new figures revealing New Zealand has one of the biggest expatriate diasporas in the developed world.

A kid from Hampton Hill Primary holds up the world.

Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson

A list of 34 - mainly OECD - countries has been published by an international database, Statista.

It shows Ireland has the highest percentage of its population living overseas, at 17.5 percent.

New Zealand is second, at 14.1 percent, slightly ahead of Portugal.

It has twice as many expatriates as Britain and three times more than the Netherlands.

The United States has only 0.5 percent of its population living overseas.