September benefit stats released - big jump in Supported Living Payment

The Supported Living Payment (SLP) replaced the Invalid's benefit. Officially:

Supported Living Payment is for people who have, or care for someone with, a health condition, injury or disability that limits their ability to work. 

Please note the graph's Y axis is not zeroed in order to show the increase more clearly.

In one year, the number climbed by 4,659 or almost 5 percent. Half of the increase is down to psychological and psychiatric conditions; the gender bias is female and most of the increase is among 55–64-year-olds (though no age group has shown a decrease). NZ Europeans have the largest increase (though it looks proportionate to their share of the population). There is no increase in carers receiving the payment. I would hazard a guess the increases in cardiac, musculoskeletal and cancer conditions reflect delays in diagnosis/treatment - in other words, a failure of the health system.

Sole parent support is on the way back up again though some of the increase is because mothers were transferred back from Jobseeker Support when the subsequent child policy was removed.

Perhaps the most important statistic - the number of children reliant on benefits - climbed through the year to September and now sits at 209,127. Remember that whenever you hear the PM maintaining a success in child poverty reduction.

And finally, there are:

That's 11.1 percent of the 18–64-year-old population and not far off the population of Christchurch.

All of this against record low unemployment.