WELLINGTON, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand households have spent more than they've earned for the fifth year in a row, the country's statistics department Stats NZ said on Thursday.

"The amount of money households has on hand has been going up since 2014, but as a group, they've spent more than half a billion dollars each year above that," national accounts senior manager Gary Dunnet said in a statement.

"That's the equivalent of each occupied household, numbering 1.66 million in New Zealand, spending about 340 NZ dollars (217.8 U.S. dollars) more a year than they make," Dunnet said.

Household net disposable income is the amount of money a household has once all incomes such as wages, interest, and child support, and outgoings like taxes have been accounted for. It represents the money available to a household to spend, save, or invest, he said.

Provisional estimates of household net disposable income increased 4.9 percent, to 169.6 billion NZ dollars for the year ending March 2019. Household final consumption expenditure was 170.2 billion NZ dollars, up 5.1 percent compared with the previous year, statistics showed.

Household saving, the balance of household net disposable income and final consumption expenditure, was negative 566 million NZ dollars in 2019.

From 2005, saving for the household sector was positive only from 2010 to 2014, peaking at 3.2 billion NZ dollars in 2012.

"The shift to positive household saving occurred shortly after the global financial crisis in 2008," Dunnet said.

On the income side, employees' pay, perks and other compensation increased 5.9 percent to 129.6 billion NZ dollars in the year ending March 2019, reflecting both pay rises and more people employed.