Greens court their 'child poverty' constituency

Green MP Jan Logie said in Parliament today that "...there are now an additional 45,000 NZ children  living in poverty." Having watched the exchange I can say she was smug.

She says the source for this claim is the latest Household Economic Survey. Here is the relevant table:

How many poor children are there in New Zealand?
(ie  How many children live in households with incomes below selected thresholds?)

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	265,000	115,000	200,000	285,000	320,000
2007	135,000	210,000	115,000	175,000	240,000	240,000
2009	125,000	230,000	140,000	210,000	280,000	255,000
2010	150,000	250,000	120,000	210,000	315,000	275,000
2011	145,000	235,000	130,000	210,000	290,000	270,000
2012	130,000	225,000	135,000	215,000	285,000	255,000
2013	120,000	215,000	135,000	205,000	260,000	235,000
2014	-	250,000	-	220,000	305,000	245,000

Logie found the best figure she could. It  features in the After Housing Costs 'moving line' 60% threshold. Any other number from the table would have been smaller.

So let's look at what the 'moving line' represents:

‘moving line’:        

o    this is the fully relative line that moves when the median moves (eg if median rises, the poverty line rises and reported poverty rates increase even if low incomes stay the same)

Now, let's look at what has happened to the median:

• median household income has risen at 3% pa above inflation in the post-GFC recovery phase

From HES 2013 to HES 2014 median household income rose 5% in real terms (5% above the CPI inflation rate). This is a large change compared with changes in incomes nearby – P40 was up 3% and P60 and P70 only 1% – and its size is likely to be a year on year statistical blip. While caution is needed about the precise size of the changes year on year, there is clear evidence of a steady rise in median household income in the post-GFC recovery, of the order of 3% pa in real terms.

Combine this with:

On the AHC moving line measures, child poverty rates in HES 2014 are around the same as their peak after the GFC. A good amount of the rise from HES 2013 to HES 2014 is due to the large rise in the BHC median, as noted above, rather than a change in the numbers in low income per se.

Oh Greens. Why are you so desperate to talk up child poverty? 

Here's another "key finding" which would be politically un-useful to the Greens.

In HES 2014, the child poverty rate using the AHC anchored line measure was 3 percentage points lower than the peak rate immediately after the GFC (26% down to 23%), and 8 percentage points down on 2004 (31% down to 23%).  This does not mean that New Zealand’s child poverty rate is a definitive 23% – rather the finding is that using this measure, the child poverty rate is falling, albeit  slowly.

  The material hardship measure shows a falling child material hardship rate using a threshold equivalent to the ‘standard’ EU level, down from a peak of 21% immediately after the GFC to 14% in 2014. Using the more severe threshold, there was a slight rise through the GFC to 10% and a small fall to 8%, the level it was at before the GFC. 

This subject is so technical that most people's eyes glaze over.

But the Greens should be called out on their constant refusal to acknowledge improving indicators.