CPAG's cherry-picking

The Child Poverty Action Group has a new report out. Here's a statistic from it, the only 'poor children' number that appears:

Data from MSD (Perry, 2014, p. 135) shows that the number of children living in households earning less than 40% of the median income after housing costs has increased by 20,000 since 2010 to 135,000 (13% of all children)

This is the table referred to:

Table F.5

Numbers of poor children in New Zealand

(ie  the number of children in households with incomes below the selected thresholds)

	BHC		AHC
	BHC ‘moving line’		AHC ‘moving line’			AHC ‘anchored line (2007)’
HES year	50%	60%	40%	50%	60%	60% (07 ref)
2001	120,000	250,000	115,000	215,000	310,000	380,000
2004	150,000	270,000	115,000	200,000	290,000	320,000
2007	140,000	210,000	115,000	170,000	240,000	240,000
2009	115,000	210,000	130,000	195,000	270,000	230,000
2010	150,000	245,000	115,000	200,000	300,000	260,000
2011	140,000	230,000	120,000	210,000	285,000	255,000
2012	130,000	220,000	130,000	205,000	285,000	240,000
2013	120,000	215,000	135,000	205,000	260,000	230,000

At the risk of being flippant, lucky for them one of the numbers was increasing. Otherwise their narrative would be spoiled.