Stuff is writing a series called 'The Whole Truth' running up to the election. It aims to fact-check campaign claims, party policies and achievements. Today they feature a piece on child poverty which also appears in the Dominion Post. I've included the entire short piece (because it is the simplest summation of the measures I've read) and added a few of my own comments:
"There is little evidence, on the Government’s own measures, of child poverty coming down.
As one of her Government’s earliest acts, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern brought in the Child Poverty Act in 2018. It established ways of measuring poverty and laid out a series of targets against them.
There are three primary measures of poverty in the Act, two of which are income-based.
For these income measures, a mathematical model is used to “equivalise”, or flatten, the incomes of different households.
This allows a consistent measure to be applied across households of all different sizes. Larger households need more income to manage than smaller households do.As a result, there is no specific income figure under which all households are said to be living in poverty.
However, the government’s first measure for child poverty does say that a child is living in poverty if they’re in a home with an income less than half the average, equivalised disposable household income, before housing costs are deducted.
(The average disposable household income, before housing costs, is currently $46,700 a year, according to Stats NZ.)
What do the numbers look like using this measure?
Ardern set a 2020/21 target of lifting 70,000 children above this line. That would mean shrinking the 2018 measure of 16.5 per cent of children to 10 per cent.
As of June 2019, the latest available figures, this measure was down by only 1.6 percentage points to 14.9 per cent. Instead of 183,500 children in poverty, there were 168,500.
There is another, similar sort of measure, which has recorded similar results to date.
Again, a child is considered in poverty if they’re in a home with an income less than half the average, equivalised disposable household income, but this time after housing costs are deducted.
(The average disposable housing income after housing costs is $35,800 a year.)
The target for this measure is a 4 per cent shift, or lifting 40,000 children from poverty.
The 253,800 impoverished children first counted by this measure in 2018 reduced 2 percentage points in the year to June 2019, to 235,400 children.
A third measure goes more directly at material hardship. It defines a child as impoverished if they live in a home that lacks six or more key indicators, such as a home that lacks shoes, fresh fruit or vegetables, the ability to see a doctor, or the ability to pay power bills.
This measure is favoured by Children’s Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft, who says it’s a better measure of a child’s life at home.
On this measure, the number of children in poverty has increased by 4100 in the year to June 2019, up 0.4 percentage points to 13.4 per cent.
The shifts on all three measures are so small that they fall within the margins of error for each.
And due to the lag in the data, it’s hard to know how recent events have affected New Zealand’s poorest children.
Despite this, Ardern has frequently cited a Treasury estimate that the number of children in poverty would reduce between 10 per cent and 12 per cent due to policies like the 2018 Families Package."
She also claims that poverty has fallen on 7 of the 9 measures. However only one of the small reductions is outside of the margin of error (-2% vs + or -1.9%). The margin of error exists because the results come from a survey of just 20,000 households.
StatsNZ itself says, "...most of the changes likely reflect the expected uncertainties present in all sample surveys."
The Minister for Child Poverty Reduction also ignores that more children are now on benefits. That was the case BEFORE Covid. At December 2019 there were 12,000 more children on benefits than at December 2017. The number of children on welfare should actually represent one of the measures.
The writer, Thomas Manch, has unusually mentioned the equivalisation method. This means a large family with a relatively high income can appear in the poverty data. A household income gets equivalised down progressively based on household members.
Finally, the data is only till June 2019 - almost 15 months old. If the June 2020 data is released pre-election the PM will undoubtedly blame her lack of progress on Covid.
And that will represent yet another obfuscation.
4 comments:
I am by not an economist, However, my early childhood years were immediately after WW2, when thousands of returning military were dumped onto a shrunken job market. A double income family was unheard of, and my father earned somewhere south of £4 a week [or possibly a fortnight?]
We grew our own fruit and vegetables, kept poultry for eggs and I recall my father working on a farm a couple of weekends a month to swell the budget a little. We didnt have a vehicle, family holidays were something I read about that apparently happened in America.
We didnt think we were hard done by, as every family across our town was the same. I can remember going down the street a couple of doors to admire a refrigerator that they had bought 2nd hand. We, alongside the rest of the street, had a "food-safe" - a cupboard with meshed openings from the underfloor area to the roof space, for cool airflow.
[We did get the first washing machine though - a wringer type with a gravity drain and was filled with a hose]
The point of all this, is that I believe a vast proportion of Kiwis then, fell well within the definition of poverty - child or other - far more so than the present. There were not then the social safety nets that are currently in place, meagre though they may appear.
And as for that idiot Becroft mentioned above, I am convinced he comes from a different planet with his advocacy of children voting, raising the age of criminal responsibility for thugs and thieves plus many more examples of sheer lunacy.
Lindsay, Oi echo's my childhood home life. A typical working class family. We never went hungry or cold. I got my first push bike at 1o. It was constructed from bits Dad scavenged from the town dump.
I read in yesterdays Manawatu Standard Palmerston Norths Queen Elizabeth College (Rich kids school) had joined the " Ministry of Education’s free school lunches programme."
Queen Elizabeth College principal Chris Moller said "The school already ran a breakfast club, but Moller said not as many students as the school would like were using it, so having a lunch option for everyone was better".
"He was expecting lunch bags for students would be filled with bread rolls, fruit and juice, which would make a big difference to the school."
"“It will be huge. Some of [the students] now are fine. What I think it will do, it will even out the playing field for them." he said.
An upper middle class Gulag perhaps.
"
It was how it was, born 1943; grew up in a drafts weatherboard house with serious gaps under doors from worn kauri door steps,
no electricity,
to bed when it became too dark to read,
one Aladdin kerosene lamp with a fabric mantle that enabled the kitchen to be lit up
Candles banished -fire risk.
Avoided the far more common outhouse with large bucket to be buried weekly a previous farm owner has septic and flush toilet.
All mutton meat diet, ate animals not fit for slaughter, arthritis crippled mostly.
Kept chooks and two pigs, bacon eggs daily for breakfast after oatmeal porridge that soaked overnight,
“Chicken” at Xmas, actually an end of lay hen.
Only vegetables from garden.
Fish twice a year, mobile fishmonger came to A&P show from Kaiapoia hundred kms distant also annual “Ewe fair”.
Very few rich people about. Notable exceptions, a City based importer A M (Iky) Saterthwaite Who purchased a farm Father was managing as owner had gone to war from naval reserve. The other a roadside food stall operator Eric Mercer, he owned a chrome covered Cadillac and seemed very rich, looking back cash rich I guess.
Very few “toys” we made our own fun, never seemed to be bored and all in total a sense of devices.
Cold damp home, bollocks droughts and windows that either didn’t open or maybe shut, brother and self slept on a verandah open to the stars.
Aah them was the days made men out of boys and no other genders than girls, they a total mystery for four males and mum.
Here here, I'm often perplexed how such an educated man as Beecroft can be so silly and unwise.
Post a Comment