A survey of expatriate New Zealanders shows about half expect to come back but 20% plan to stay away.
The online survey was run by Kea, the Kiwi expat association, with 18,000 respondents living in 155 countries.
The survey also found almost a third of respondents aged between 25 and 44 earned more than $NZ100,000, compared with about 3% in the New Zealand population as a whole.
Convenor of the migration research group at Waikato University Professor Richard Bedford says a very large proportion of the respondents are younger New Zealanders with about 66% aged between 24 and 39.
"So this is not a lot of older New Zealanders overseas who are feeling really nostalgic about coming home. This is the group the government was actually interested in having some response from," Bedford told ASB Business.
At least a fifth of those expecting to come home are planning to do so reasonably soon, he says.
Less than half of the respondents gave economic reasons for going oversees - mostly better income prospects - and a number were on job transfer or were recruited by firms overseas, Bedford says.
However, a large majority gave non-economic reasons for wanting to come home, despite nearly 80% recognising New Zealand's good economic run of recent years.
