A Stuff ("trustworthy, accurate and reliable news") headline reads:
Government considering change to benefit access rules
A spokeswoman for Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said entitlement to most benefits and social assistance was reliant on the "couple" unit of assessment.
“Moving to an individual unit of entitlement would be very complex however it is something that is in our medium to long-term work programme.”
Despite the headline which infers something that might happen shortly in response to the pandemic, I doubt there's any immediacy regarding individualising benefits.
In 2018 economist and social policy advisor Michael Fletcher was commissioned by Superu to investigate individualising entitlements in New Zealand’s benefit system. Fletcher cites investigations as far back as the Royal Commission on Social Policy 1988 which concluded, “…a rapid move to individual entitlement would mean a very large increase in government expenditure…”
Fletcher goes on to model changes that “… suggest the cost of individualising all entitlements would be in the order of $1.5 billion to $2 billion.” But he also cites forthcoming work from Anderson and Chapple that estimates individualisation would cost several billion dollars per annum.
On the one hand, compared to what has been spent on wage subsidies to date, "several billion" might seem palatable. Bear in mind though that those estimates are based on 'normal' levels of benefit uptake. Not during a recession or depression.
To make this change in the near future could only be achieved by more borrowing.
(BTW I cannot leave this article without a further comment. Geoff Simmons from the TOP party says,"“Relationships aren't life-long like they were in the 70s and 80s when these rules were designed. I don't know many people who even have joint bank accounts any more.” What a sad observation. I really don't give a monkeys if people want to flip in and out of relationships. That's their business. But very little thought is given to the effect this has on their children...a whole other topic for another day.)
2 comments:
But there’s the rub - if you are going to flip in and out then don’t have children. Marriage, for all its faults over the years, evolved to provide a stable base for a family ie parents and their children. The current situation, exemplified by PM Ardern and her partner, can be stable but all too often, exemplified by the several hundred thousand others, it’s a recipe for disaster. What a good example it would have been had Ms Srdern married the father of her child before the birth (I appreciate that preconception might be too big an ask). As you say, a topic for another day.
Sorry PM, Ardern.
Post a Comment