Monday, July 22, 2013

NZ Child Poverty rate bang on OECD median

The Child Poverty Action Group reacting to the latest Household Incomes Report:
"The government's being told there's no excuse for its failure to act on the high number of children living in poverty. The Child Poverty Action Group says latest figures show one quarter of all New Zealand children are living below the poverty line. Its convener, Associate Professor Mike O'Brien, says that hasn't changed from a year ago. He says that may not be surprising, as the government hasn't done anything to make any difference."We've seen enough material from a whole range of sources to know the extent of child poverty and I guess I would have expected there would have been really concerted effort from the government to respond to some of those reports and the data that we now have." Dr O'Brien says New Zealand's high rate of child poverty damages the country's international reputation."(My emphasis)

Here's a table from that report:


Table J.3
Child poverty rates (%) in the OECD-34, c 2010:
50% of median threshold (BHC)
Israel
29
France
11
Turkey
28
Luxembourg
11
Mexico
25
Ireland
10
Chile
24
Netherlands
10
Spain
21
United Kingdom
10
United States
21
Switzerland
10
Italy
18
Germany
9
Greece
18
Slovenia
9
Japan
16
Hungary
9
Portugal
16
Czech Republic
9
Australia
15
Korea
9
Canada
14
Sweden
8
Poland
14
Austria
8
Belgium
13
Iceland
7
Estonia
12
Norway
5
Slovak Republic
12
Finland
4
New Zealand
12
Denmark
4
OECD median
12








Additionally CPAG make no mention that child hardship actually fell between 2011/12:



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In other words, given NZ's much lower economic performance than the OECD average NZ has far too little so-called "child poverty"