Five points of interest;
1/ The number of babies (0 years) relying on welfare has grown 17 percent since 2005 whereas the growth in total births has grown by around 11 percent. More people are going on welfare from the time their child is born.
2/ Many people seem happy with mothers (usually the benefit recipient) receiving a benefit when their children are very young. Yet 67 percent of the children are 5 or older.
3/ The number of children on welfare has dropped since 2001. Labour made a big deal out of reducing 'child poverty'. But given the period featured record low employment and good economic growth (so we are told) the drop in the number of children on welfare was relatively small.
4/ According to NZ Statistics population estimates there are 1,149,000 children aged 18 or younger. So around 1 in 5 is on welfare. In the poorest areas this will jump to 2 or 3 in 5. That means being on a benefit is normalised and thus the tendency is towards more benefit receipt.
5/ In the 0-2 age group the ratio rises to 1 in 4 children being on welfare. That is fairly sobering stuff.
7 comments:
Numbers are far to low Lindsay. You're not counting:
* Children of whom one or both parents are on WFF
* Children of whom one or both parents are state sector "employees" (civil servants/state teachers/state nurses) etc
* Children of whom one or both parents are commercial contractors for government agencies ("Wellyweb developers"/works contractors/ etc)
* Children who attend state schools
* Children whose parents do not have private health insurance
So frankly your stats are completely the wrong way around. It's not that 1 or 2 or 3 in 5 kids are on benefits - it is that fewer than 1 in 10 Kiwi kids are NOT enmeshed in socialist beneficiary culture
Sinner,
you forgot to include children whose parents get a student allowance, or whose primary caregivers get national superannuation
My kids can tick the last two.
What about children who ride on public transport, use public roads, visit Te Papa, get immunised, use public libraries and swimming pools, etc etc.
Every child is enmeshed in the "socialist beneficiary culture" by your definition, to some extent.
Children love to F..k end of story ... No offense.....
Dirk
you forgot to include children whose parents get a student allowance, or whose primary caregivers get national superannuation
Yep. indeed. good point!
What about children who ride on public transport, use public roads, visit Te Papa, get immunised, use public libraries and swimming pools, etc etc.
Opps them too.
Every child is enmeshed in the "socialist beneficiary culture" by your definition, to some extent.
Absolutely. Shows what a huge job we have to do!
Every child is enmeshed in the "socialist beneficiary culture" by your definition, to some extent.
well except that there are actually lots and lots of kids who don't use public transport (aka Labour Party Transport), who don't use public hospitals (aka Labour Party Hospitals), who don't go to public schools (aka Labour Party Schools), who don't get immunized, whose parents pay for real university education and real universities overseas and so on and so forth.
For people living in Wellington that might be hard o understand. For people living in the rest of NZ, it is what we aspire to!
And - more to the point - this situation is very very easy to reconcile. Simply abolishing benefits, privatising hospitals and schools etc
and the problem goes away for good
There are few other problems in the world that admit such simple and straightforward - and above all achievable - solutions.
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