More than half of New Zealand' s working age population have started to do personal shopping online, the government's statistics agency announced Monday.

A survey by Statistics New Zealand showed that the number of New Zealanders shopping online had risen by 11 percent since the last survey in 2009 to more than 1.8 million last year, while the number of households with some sort of Internet access was up 5 percent to 1.3 million, or 80 percent of homes.

When asked about their spending over the four weeks before being surveyed, 1.2 million people -- more than a third of the working age population -- said they had made an online purchase, a rise of 400,000 from 2009.

"We can't say whether these are pricier one-off purchases, or multiple smaller purchases. What we do know is that 45 percent of online shoppers spent up to 100 NZ dollars (84 U.S. dollars) online in the four weeks prior to being surveyed, and another 40 percent spent up to 500 online NZ dollars," information and communication technology statistics manager Hamish Hill said in a statement.

Meanwhile, half of all users aged 25 to 44 years were doing their reading online, and 76 percent of 15 to 24-year-olds used the Internet to listen to or download music.

Two-thirds of the country engaged in social networking, a 20- percent increase from 2009, including one in every six users aged 75 or over. Endi

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