The evidence that persuaded the govt to raise benefits

Before the budget I seem to remember the PM  referring to 60,000 children in real poverty (haven't time now to chase down source). I wondered what definition he was using. Looks like the table below which measures items of deprivation. So 60,000 children have 11+ deprivations:

Table D.4

Cumulative distribution for higher DEP-17 scores (% individuals), LSS 2008

DEP-17 score	6+	7+	8+	9+	10+	11+
ALL (%)	14	11	8	6	4	3
0-17 yrs (%)	21	17	13	10	8	6
# of children	220k	180k	140k	100k	80k	60k
# of households with children	110k	90k	70k	50k	40k	30k

Here is the table of items .

Table D.5

18 child-specific items used for calibrating DEP-17 for school-aged children (aged 6-17 yrs)

Enforced lack of essentials		Economised, cut back or delayed purchases ‘a lot’ because money was needed for other essentials (not just to be thrifty or to save for a trip or other non-essential)
	Two pairs of shoes in a good condition that are suitable for daily activities (for each child)	Child(ren) continued wearing shoes or clothes that were worn out or the wrong size
	Two sets of warm winter clothes for each child	Postponed child’s visit to the dentist
	A waterproof coat for each child	Postponed child’s visit to the doctor
	Fresh fruit and vegetables daily	Did not pick up child’s prescription
	A meal with meat, fish or chicken (or vegetarian equivalent) each day	Unable to pay for a child to go on a school trip or other school event
	A separate bed for each child	Child(ren) went without music, dance, kapa haka, art, swimming or other special interest lessons
	Enough bedrooms so that children aged over 10 of the opposite sex are not sharing a room	Had to limit your child(ren)’s involvement in sport
	Have children’s friends around to play and eat from time to time	Made do with very limited space for children to study or play
	Have children’s friends to a birthday party
	All the school uniform required by the school(s) for each child

This is a much better way of measuring hardship than simply measuring household income.


Then,

Main income source for parents

·         Beneficiary families have higher hardship rates than working families, with those who move between benefit and work having rates somewhere in between.

·         Nevertheless, at the less severe hardship levels (eg 7+) children in hardship are split evenly between beneficiary and working families. This reflects the fact that there are many more working families than beneficiary families.

·         Beneficiary families are more likely than working families to be in more severe hardship, though around a third of children in more severe hardship are from working families (families that have no core benefit income at all).

 


 Response - raise beneficiary income.

This data was from 2008. What will be most interesting is when, or if, the exercise is repeated, will the deprivation have eased. What would you expect?

(Sorry will have to sort the presentation later - but the link to the tables is above)