Sunday, January 13, 2013

Children's Commissioner ignores context


The Children's Commissioner has started the year off with another condemnation of New Zealand's child poverty statistics:
Dr Wills is incredulous as he explains that no other OECD country had the same rise in child poverty or inequality in the 1990s.

Measured by the Gini coefficient one other country did have the same rise in inequality - Sweden.

And many other countries weren't far behind.

Those countries that didn't experience inequality growth - where income became more evenly distributed - were....

...France, Greece, Ireland, Spain  and Turkey. All countries with economies that are in trouble.

1 comment:

Johnny said...

The method used is a fraud. It pretends to use a certain threshold, and then from this is determined a resulting percentage. But in reality, the preferred resulting percentage was worked backwards to give the starting point that was needed to give the predetermined outcome.

Also, if everyone above the line gives everyone below the line say $10,000 towards the upkeep of their kids, the line would not move. It is a con.

[And I told them this in my submissions when submissions were invited]

However one of my submissions did get reflected in the final report. The interim report said that the poverty problem was equally shared between the races. But then the interim report repeatedly said that the solutions were needed "especially in Maori/Pacifika situations". This fake Maori/Pacifika sop, disappeared in the final report. I like to think I may have contributed my bit to the change.