I noticed a comment on Isolent Prick's blog from someone who occasionally comments here;
A small percentage (1%-3%) of people are born to be bludgers.
I'm not sure what this statement is based on.
But consider this. Half of the children born in 1994, approximately 30,000, had contact with the benefit system before age three. Having contact with the benefit system means being with an adult care-giver receiving an income-tested benefit. Children may not be born onto a benefit but find themselves on one within a couple of years. Relationships split, fathers become unemployed, they are adopted out to a beneficiary caregiver, a parent becomes sick, etc. For many it is only a transitory experience. But for others it lasts for years and leads to expectations or assumptions that they too avail themselves of lifestyle-welfare payments.
"Bivariate analysis of factors associated with long benefit durations highlights having first contact with the benefit system at birth; living with a sole caregiver at first contact; and first appearing with a primary beneficiary who was female, Maori or aged under 20."
If the same analysis had been conducted of children born in 2000 the proportion having contact with the benefit system by age 3 is likely to have dropped due to unemployment dropping. But the same underlying factors leading to long stays on welfare would be unchanged.
Right now there are 219,000 children on a main benefit - about 20 percent of all 0-18 year-olds. As the concentration is greater in younger ages the incidence rises to one in four. Move into the lowest decile areas and you are probably looking at schools where half of the children are on welfare.
Add to this a NZ (AUT) study estimated the true correlation coefficient between welfare participation and their parents is somewhere between one-third and two-thirds, but probably much closer to the lower limit in this range.
1 - 3 percent looks too low to me.
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2 comments:
.. and if you look at the kids on the lowest decile schools that are on welfare you`ll find that most of them have parents who are not married - and of those, most will be Maori.
As are most of the "child killers" we are all referring to re the unnecessary anti-smacking bill. Lets face it, these are the most horrific cases and predominately involve Maori parents/caregivers --
James Whakaruru
Craig Manukau
Delcelia Witika
Coral Burrows
Lilybing
Chris & Cru Kahui.
Yet nobody has the guts to speak up about the race issue. Let's face it if all these cases involved, say, Dutch parents and Dutch families [highly unlikely of course] instead of Polynesian, there would be a terrific outcry and investigation of their race right back for 300 years, and demands that the Netherlands Govt. investigates and accounts for this situation, compensation, background checks, Consulate staff interviews, uproar in Parliament, and so on.
Why don't the Maori leaders from Sharples and Turia on down own up to the situation rather than duck for cover and cry "racist"?.
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