In 2006 40 percent of Maori women aged 20-29 were beneficiaries.
Always keen to have data that is current, I asked the Ministry of Social Development how many Maori women were dependent at the end of 2010. I matched their response against Statistics NZ population estimates. Here is the result:
This is quite revealing. Nearing half are dependent when young, but many do not overcome that dependency. While quite a few Maori women will go into work after raising a family, many others won't and will appear in either the DPB, DPB Women Alone, Unemployment, Sickness or Invalid Benefit statistics. Maori women disproportionately experience ill-health, unemployment or take on care-giving for sick dependants, grand children or other whanau.
Anyway, if the rate of dependence for working-age Maori women extended across women in general, there would be almost half a million working-age New Zealand females on a benefit.
As it stands there are around 190,000.
2 comments:
Aren't Maori women also the most likely demongraphic to succeed in small business? Why doesn't MSD expand it's Enterprise Allowance Scheme then and help solve the issue, assuming it is an issue at all?? (Sorry, I can't recall the reference)
Did you know that when MSD collects it's data beneficaries can opt to indicate ethinicity...it is the beneficaries opinion rather than actual genetics that counts. I believe this will skew the data as people tend to think being Maori might get them additional funding/or support. This is a myth but widely believed none the less.
As the world marks the seven billionth human birth today, the Pacific region is marking its ten millionth.
Ms Subramaniam says sixty percent of people in the region are under the age of 25 and this high proportion of young people should be regarded as an opportunity.
“In the Pacific you want to make sure that the investments are made in these young people right now whether it comes to health or education or employment because at some point the Pacific does have an opportunity to have a large demographic dividend when these young people get into a productive age group.”
http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=64090
So what are all the productive people going to do on the Pacific Islands?
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