Poor Expectations

Sometimes numbers just breeze right past me. Then I do a double-take and think twice. One such number just presented itself in a reply to a written question from Judith Collins to the Minister of Social Development.

3,099 clients aged 16-17 years receive a main benefit (excluding partners).

There are around 120,000 16-17 year-olds. That means more than 1 in 40 is on a benefit. That's like one in a large school class. Hell, that's a lot. And it doesn't auger well for the future because many are just starting on a lifetime habit.

Yesterday a friend sent me some research from the University of British Colombia which shows that availability of welfare encourages kids to leave school.

Bill Warburton had observed that the dropout rate for children at risk of receiving income assistance rose with B.C.'s welfare caseload through the early 1990s and fell when a substantial package of welfare reforms was introduced Jan. 1, 1996, which removed about 100,000 people from the welfare rolls.

Using data from the B.C. ministries of education and employment and income assistance, Warburton found that when the New Democrats began a program of welfare reform in the mid-1990s, high school dropout rates began to fall and continued to fall for several years.

Arguably the most important aspect of welfare reform is it wards off those who would otherwise have become enmeshed. It makes them consider better options.

A good chunk of those NZ 16 and 17 year-olds on welfare are either pregnant and on a sickness benefit or a teenage mum and on the emergency maintenance allowance. Until the system changes expectations the problem-producing benefit lifestyle will continue unabated.