Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Child poverty - 'recession' the wrong culprit

Last week the release of the NZ Children's Social Health Monitor's latest report about the effects of recession provoked much angst and agitation for a stronger safety net for children. My response was that the recession isn't the problem. The DPB is.

Here is one of their graphs. It illustrates my point very well.

3 comments:

Lucy said...

It does Lindsay.

Swimming said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Swimming said...

So probably as many as one in five new babies is not being financially supported by their father.

You also need to take into account two parent families who have kids on benefits. Also to to be taken into account are part time workers(including students), those who have not worked in the same place for more than six months, those who have two part time jobs that dont get them to 30 hours a week. None get PPL but still have to give birth and look after kids.I`d say a high proportion are from two parent families and finacially supported by their fathers in some ways - but htese people get minimal or no PPL.