The majority of the poor are parents with jobs and their children (although they may have had only one or two), living in their own home albeit usually with a mortgage.
I think that's wrong.
From the Household Incomes Report, p147
Figure H.5
Proportion of poor
children who live in ‘workless’ households (AHC
60%, fixed line)
(The top line is workless/part-time, the bottom line is workless. Reproduction has changed the line appearance.)
Then from p138,
47% of poor children lived with their families in private rental accommodation, and another 21% in HNZC homes
How do these two pieces of information square with Easton's claim that "The majority of the poor are parents with jobs and their children (although they may have had only one or two), living in their own home albeit usually with a mortgage" ?
(I realise he is talking 'parents' whereas I am talking 'children' but there can't be much in the difference statistically.)
4 comments:
I'd trust *your* figures any time rather than his, Lindsay.
Even in this short post, you have well and truly fisked him.
Well done!
Lindsay - there is awful lot of stuff written about poverty. Most of it is complete rubbish produced to support some political programme.
I heard a statistic recently and it was this. "China has lifted more people out of pverty than the rest of the world combined." I thought this sounded pretty interesting so i looked into it. I forget the exact figures, but China had hundreds of millions living in deep poverty (thanks to Mao and his bunch of rat bags). But due to the change in the Chinese economy over the last 30 or 40 years, those hundreds of millions of chinese that were living in poverty have had their income raised and their standard of living imporoved to such an extent that they are now living in relativly good standards.
Meanwhile the rest of the world has gone backwards. Africa is as bad as it ever was (despite billions being thrown at it - most of which goes to swiss bank accounts owned by despotic leaders) and the number of people living in poverty in 'The West' have increased.
I wonder why.
There are two reasons.
1. Globalisation - where jobs were essentially exported to mostly China - but also India, Vietnam, etc. This explains why the Chinese economy was able to improve so much and help the poverty striken (mostly rural) chinese out of poverty.
2 Feminisation. Now - dont take this wrong - but the fact is that in the 1980's in the west millions of women decided to leave their children at child care (or have no children at all) and go get a paid job. Now the law of supply and demand means that when there are too many workers, pay reduces. And this was at a time when big corporations were transfering their maufacturing jobs to places like china or Mexico. I recall a cabinet minister in NZ explaining how the shoe manufacturing industry could compete - match wages (with the chinese)!!!
And today we have a situation where once one income could support a family and pay for a house - we now have a situation where two incomes in many case cant support a family or pay for a house.
This background is the real cause of any poverty (most of it being relative poverty) in New Zealand.
number of people living in poverty in 'The West' have increased.
1. Globalisation NOPE. Jobs wouldn't be exported if workers in the welfare west were paid what they're worth (clue, not very much)
2 Feminisation NOPE
The answer is simple WELFARE
End welfare, end the laws associated with welfare, minimum wage, labour laws in crimes act, corporate taxation, etc,
and then the problem goes away
I recall a cabinet minister in NZ explaining how the shoe manufacturing industry could compete - match wages (with the chinese)!!!
Do you want to eat? Then work!
If you're only worth 0.50c per day that's all you get
I disagree with both of you. The children most affected by poverty are those who have severely disabled parents/parents or children with multiple disabilities.
The reasons for this are twofold.
Firstly there is an often repeated fallacy where doctors are refusing to sign for disability costs that are above the amount allocated for the disability allowance, even though they are clearly therapeutically significant expenses and directly related to the disability(ies). (For those who don't know Work and Income have discretion around any disability cost, and costs over the $60ish upper limit can be picked up by tertiary allowances of either the old special benefit or TAS). This misinformation is repeated even by highly credible organisations such as the NZ Pediatric Society.
This situation has been greatly exacerbated with the false belief that doctors determine what a person receives from Work and Income. I know I sound like I'm contradicting myself, but bare with me.
Work and Income determine how much someone is paid based on the information supplied. When doctors omit known costs it effectively misleads the system. So, if the system doesn't have supporting information stating that the client has a medical need to incur a cost it can affect Special Needs Grant applications, not just their regular welfare payment.
Secondly severely disabled parents cannot obtain the IWTC because by definition they are unable to work the 20 hours required to qualify.
Kids from these households are effectively penalised by their parents disability.
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