Not telling the truth about the DPB

The DomPost is doing a series called New Zealand By The Numbers drawing on the Census 2006 information. Today they show how people earn money. Care in interpreting this is needed. The question asked people to identify the ways in which they had earned income during the past 12 months. It is not a snapshot in time.

So although 92,172 people said they received money from an unemployment benefit during the previous year, at March 2006 only 44,549 were actually on an unemployment benefit. Likewise 70,551 people received money from a sickness benefit but at March 2006 there were only 46,072 people on a sickness benefit.

But this anomaly I don't understand. 93,090 people said they received money from the domestic purposes benefit yet at March 2006 there were 103,362 on that benefit.

That's nearly 10,000 people who either haven't filled in a form or aren't telling the truth. In fact, it's much higher than 10,000. Every year between 35,000 and 40,000 people move on and off the DPB so we should have seen a churning effect as with the unemployment and sickness benefits. The number should have been somewhere between 130,000 and 140,000.

Now why wouldn't you tell the government you were on the DPB?

The official Census 2006 net undercount, by the way, was 2 percent.