Around 36 percent of Maori children aged 0 were included in a benefit during the year ended July 2020. This is up from 33.7% in the year to July 2017. For non-Maori the proportion is 18% - up from 15.9% three years earlier.
These stats sit at the core of ongoing and disproportionate Maori disadvantage.
The answer isn't to increase benefit payment rates (which the new Labour government will come under enormous pressure to do.) It's to increase educational achievement and employment.
5 comments:
Lindsay
Has there ever been a report correlating family structure, and welfare dependency as it relates to those whom the government determines fulfil the definition of being in 'child poverty'?
I'm assuming that most who fall into this category are either welfare dependent, and / or living off a single parent benefit. While correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation, I suspect the numbers are likely to tell a story of their own.
Brendan, I touch on each of those in this report:
https://www.familyfirst.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Child-Poverty-and-Family-Structure-FULL-REPORT-1.pdf
When Family First's charitable status was recently returned by the Court of Appeal the judge made mention of my reports saying, "Lindsay Mitchell’s three reports on family structure and social outcomes synthesise a range of census data and previous research by government departments and academics to argue that marriage correlates with, and causes, lower rates of (i) child poverty; (ii) child abuse; and (iii) imprisonment."
I aim to use data and research that stacks up as non-partisan.
Thanks Lindsay
"51% of children in poverty live in single parent families."
Hard to argue that family structure is not a defining factor, but as you point out, it is apparently inappropriate to suggest that some family structures produce better outcomes than others.
Until this issue can be honestly addressed, there is little hope for changing the most depressing of statistics for our nations children. How does one make this an election issue, is it even possible?
Thanks again for all you do in this space.
Is that a typo in the line "Around 36 percent of Maori children aged 0"?
Under 12 months if you prefer. The data MSD provides classifies these children as '0'and that is what my chart picks up from their data.
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