Being a statistic

Twice this year the stats I frequently blog about have become personal.

First I had to make a call to CYF. I guess it will be logged as a report of concern. They were helpful.

Second, while the overall unemployment rate grew  by 0.3 percentage points between December 2015 and December 2016, a significant unemployment rise affected 15-24 year-olds: 10.9% in December 2015 to 13.6% in December 2016. Sitting in the group is my 22 year-old BA son.

It's not easy watching your kids (they are always kids to me) applying and applying and not even getting interviews. He's hardworking, self-disciplined, punctual, good-humoured, a reader and a thinker. And of course I would say all that. I am his mother. But I flinch when people stereotype his generation as lazy, unrealistic, illiterate and ill-prepared for the workforce.

No doubt, as Mr Micawber faithfully avowed, "Something will turn up."

Unemployment creates a vicious circle

A reader sent me a US article about the best way to alleviate poverty in the US. Unsurprisingly it concludes that work is the best strategy. But I particularly appreciated this statement:

"...work is more than just a means of income generation. Work also provides adults and their families with a time structure, a source of status and identity, a means of participating in a collective purpose, and opportunity for social engagement outside family life.  A host of studies have connected joblessness to increased risk of family destabilization, suicide, alcohol abuse, and disease incidence, as well as reduced lifespan. Several large reviews of research conclude that unemployment not only reduces physical but also psychological well-being."

Although the paper does not make a direct connection, the graph below highlights this. Percentage-wise, people not working due to illness and disability has quadrupled since 1969.

Being unemployed makes people psychologically unwell. The same pattern has occurred in New Zealand. This problem is not going away. In fact it is worsening. The number of people who relay on welfare for the reasons of psychiatric or psychological incapacity - the primary reason for being on the Supported Living Payment - have risen from 51,000 to 55,000 since 2011.

Unemployment creates a vicious circle.It can ultimately make people unemployable.

The good and the bad

Yes my blog is supposed to be about welfare and related matters but the grind can get you down. To add to that the Wellington weather has been utterly abysmal. The lack of summer started as an interesting talking point but has become a real downer. My often-noisy, chaotic, creative daughter left home for Dunedin and the house is too quiet. So for some good news....

Readers may recall my exuberance over a horse I have taken a share in, winning his first start (3rd in his lifetime) at Alexandra Park back in late December.

Since then Everything has won three more times, and had a 4th and 5th placing. I went to watch him at Otaki on Sunday where he won the Otaki Cup.

The trainer, Nicky Chilcott, is riding (or should that be 'driving') on the crest of a wave. It's a thrill to be involved.

Children removed from home before they are one

Ten percent more infants were removed in the year to June 2016 than in the year to June 2011. These are babies who no other family member can be found to care for them. Very sad.

Source

"Marriage is a dirty word?"

Last year's report Child Abuse and Family Structure: What is the evidence telling us? largely flew below the radar. But this welcome editorial appeared in the Northland Age earlier this week. Thank you Peter Jackson, whoever you are. 

Editorial: Marriage is a dirty word?
By Peter Jackson

Bob McCoskrie will be well used to it by now, but the response to a report declaring that children who are raised by their married biological parents are at a much reduced risk of abuse is illuminating.
The first response to last week's Northland Age story (Ssshhh - Don't mention family structure) was to dismiss the report because it had been commissioned by Family First.
Such is the level of critical thinking in some quarters these days. And it is that prejudice against what some see as old-fashioned values, as promoted by Family First, that is preventing us from doing anything meaningful to reduce the rate of violence against children.
All might not be lost though. One reader who dismissed Lindsay Mitchell's research as propaganda supposed that the key might be stability rather than marital status.
Fancy that. Such a profound analysis must give us all cause to believe in the survival of intelligence.
Lindsay Mitchell, whose history strongly suggests she is not for sale to any lobby group, has an impressive CV as a welfare commentator and researcher.
More importantly, her conclusions on this occasion do not apply solely to this country.
The indisputable fact that children who grow up in step, blended or sole-parent families are in greater danger of abuse by adults than those who grow up with both biological parents is replicated elsewhere.
Some hackles will be raised by her finding that Maori and Pacific families are over-represented in child abuse rates, and feature more than their share of ex-nuptial births, the absence of one parent or both, large numbers of siblings (especially from clustered or multiple births) and/or very young mothers. Long-term welfare dependence is another risk factor.
But, before the knives come out, she also finds that Maori and non-Maori children alike who live in two-parent working families suffer very low abuse rates.
Asian children, whose population has the lowest proportion of single-parent families, suffer disproportionately low rates of abuse.
The presence of biological fathers matters, she says, in protecting children from abuse, and marriage presents the greatest likelihood that the father will remain part of an intact family.
Mitchell's final conclusion is that there are "certain" family structures in which children will be far more vulnerable than others.
Is anyone surprised by that? Well yes, apparently some are. And offended. Some see it as a shameless plug for Family First, and the espousing of values that have had their day.
The world has changed, you see. Adults now have the right to scratch their itches. If they don't want to commit to a relationship, they don't have to.
Society no longer expects a public display of commitment, and like it or not, some children are paying a very high price for that.

More 

Individualism misunderstood and misrepresented

Progress painstakingly slow

Latest benefit statistics show painstakingly slow progress on raw numbers.

(Note the first MSD chart is mislabeled and should read "to December 2016")

But a few other aspects can be considered.

"The majority (70.4 percent) of main benefit recipients had been receiving a benefit continuously for more than one year."

This proportion has been constant since at least 2010. Bearing in mind that in December there are more temporary beneficiaries, during the rest of the year the percent who have been continuously dependent for more than a year increases to around 73%.

How have other characteristics changed?

You would hope that the beneficiary population would be ageing as proof the reforms to discourage young people from becoming dependent early are working.

I've compared December 2007 to December 2016:

Further analysis of the 18-24 year-old group is required to make sound conclusions but on the face of it, not a great result. And while there are probably slightly fewer Maori beneficiaries, their disproportionality has worsened. The lower ratio of female dependence is largely a result of the fall in sole parents on a benefit.

As an electoral issue welfare seems to have faded away. I'm not sure why. It's still a huge concern to have one in ten people unable to support themselves, for whatever reason.The focus certainly seems to have shifted more towards the 700,000 plus people who are supported by the taxpayer by dint of age. I don't want to have an argument about Super and entitlement etc. but the economic future implications cannot continue to be ignored.

To keep an issue in the limelight  strong opposition activity is required. Labour and the Greens can only complain that the government is being too hard on beneficiaries and I don't think that is gaining any traction. They can't attack them on performance unless they can promise to do better. And they don't have any good ideas about how.

Mobile phone offending overtakes alcohol offending

Many interpretations could be read into the following statistics. For offences to be recorded they have to be discovered for starters. Police are constantly complaining about under-resourcing (aided and abetted by the opposition) yet they manage to find plenty of staff to man alcohol check points. On a recent road trip across Victoria and NSW the lack of police on the roads was most noticeable when compared to NZ. In a week we saw two police cars (though noted large numbers of police stations). 

My husband was stopped yet again driving home from work last night at an alcohol check point. He asked the officer if they had caught anyone over the limit. The reply was," No. But we've caught people close to it." Husband noted that you cannot "catch" people who haven't broken the law but I think it went over said officer's head.

Anyway, what can be inferred from the statistics below is that banning the use of cellphones while driving has failed. Alcohol offending was on the decline but with the lowering of the limit the trend has reversed. You have to ask the question, with the downward trend what was the rationale for lowering the limit anyway?

And which is more dangerous? Drinking and driving, or talking/texting and driving? The first seems to attract a great deal more societal disapproval but perhaps that's an illogical attitude. Perhaps the use of cell phones while driving is not particularly frowned upon because so many people do it. In which case, what use is a law that is routinely flouted? The revenue is handy though.

Source

One child every 45 minutes

That's roughly how often a child is born onto welfare in New Zealand. According to Statistics NZ a child is born every 9 minutes. According to me every fifth child born will rely on a benefit, if not directly, shortly after their arrival.

If you doubt my statistics, refer to MSD's from earlier years:

At September 2016 there were 179,732 children reliant on a main benefit - slightly up on the June and March quarters but down on Dec 2015. This represents 15.3% of all children (aged 0-18) but in the 0-4 age group, the figure rises to 19.3%.

Sixty nine percent rely on Sole Parent Support (though this is an under count of the extent of sole parent dependence given thousands more receive jobseeker, emergency maintenance, supported living and youth benefits.) Most children reliant on a benefit appear in the child poverty statistics (though not all). Therefore, the main driver of child poverty and hardship is sole parenthood.

(Hat-tip to whoever submitted the OIA request from which the last graph stats are sourced)

If I was a conspiracy theorist...

... I 'd be suspicious of the following error made by the Ministry of Social Development.

The Ministry now publishes OIA responses. I was browsing through the topics and initially ignored these two:

Bryan Petter is unknown to me and I assumed the request concerned some personal matter.

Later, curiosity got the better of me and I took a look.

In fact, Bryan Petter is actually Bryan Perry, MSD's producer of the Household Incomes Report, the chief source of poverty and hardship statistics.

There is no way that the error is a mere typo. An extra letter has been added.

Then again, there is little point in trying to hide a release of documents that have been heavily redacted anyway.

Still, the matter leaves me curious ...

Is the hysteria about inequality overblown?

Oxfam are releasing a report this afternoon belly-aching about the disproportionate amount of wealth owned by the richest New Zealanders. Andrew Little is already on the band-wagon blaming National.

While 'wealth' and 'incomes' are not an exact match, in the interests of balance:

For those who like to look at the bigger picture the accompanying text is interesting:

The long-run perspective in Figure J.7 can tell more than one story.  Taking the end of the “great compression” (1950 to 1980) as the starting point, the conclusion is that for the five English-speaking countries in the graph, inequality (understood as the share of income received by the top 1%) increased strongly to 2011. With the 1920s as the starting point, the “great compression” can be seen as the “aberration” and now the distribution has returned to where it was ninety years ago.

Source

The negative effect of welfare on children's outcomes

Unfortunately time does not permit me to add much commentary but you can go to the link below the graph for more detailed information. Essentially when tracking the progress of children born in 1993 the lines clearly demonstrate the negative influence of welfare on future outcomes:

(left click to enlarge)

Extracted from

NZ Herald coverage of report here

Quote of the Day

Poverty in a society is overcome by productivity, and in no other way. There is no political alchemy which can transmute diminished production into increased consumption.

– John Chamberlain

(hat-tip FFF)

The Left's intransigence over tax cuts

Just home from an Australian sojourn  (during which I managed to read an entire book, a particularly dark Colleen McCullough book), here's an op-ed  from Gordon Campbell you might wish to comment on:

Ever since the world fell prey to the mullahs of the free market in the 1980s, no amount of real world evidence has managed dispel one key tenet of their economic faith. Namely, the idea that if you cut income taxes and taxes on small business, a wave of individual enterprise and entrepreneurial energy will thus be unleashed, profits will rise and – hey bingo! – the tax cuts will soon be paying for themselves via all that extra economic activity that this virtuous cycle will have set in train.

My off the cuff response:

Tax cuts are never significant because state-spending won't allow it.

Insignificant tax cuts will not stimulate entrepreneurship.

Typical governments are in the business of balancing budgets. REAL tax cuts are rare in the developed world.

What I do believe is that the Laffer Curve is real. You can only squeeze a lemon so much.

New blog

Mark Hubbard has started a new blog about art, films and books which looks promising. The art selection so far has introduced me to unfamiliar but attractive paintings. About to add to my blog roll.

"Draconian" approach will have a cost

The clamp down on public gatherings for the purposes of entertainment is becoming more and more of a problem. Just last month I blogged about the heavily-policed fiasco that Martinborough food festival has become. The latest comes in the form of the Kurow races, an event that has probably been held for more than a century and I imagine is akin to Tauherenikau on News Years Day, a benign but happy family picnic occasion.

New alcohol rules imposed on the Kumara Nuggets race meeting on January 14 have resulted in a sting in the tail for punters.
The Kumara Racing Club has been required to have 22 private security guards on course, instead of five, and that has pushed up the entry fee from $10 to $15.
The club applied to the Westland District Council in early October for the liquor licence, only to be met with a barrage of new requirements from health authorities, which created a "a lot of uncertainty" around being able to run the meeting next month, committee member Les Guenole said today.
The club had previously been planning to have alcohol-free areas but was instead told to hire more security guards, and was prevented from being able to advertise the meeting as BYO...
In a statement, Westland Mayor Bruce Smith criticised the hoops the Kumara Racing Club had to go.
"Crown (Public) Health, council and the police all became involved and unrealistic restrictions were requested by these parties based on what they say is legislation," Mr Smith said...
It was a turnaround for an event which was described this year by the West Coast police in the local media as "being well run with very few problems".
Being now required to increase security numbers, along with ordinary police presence was "a draconian step," Mr Smith said.

And that is the kicker. In the usual lazy and unjust bureaucratic modus operandi, all events are being punished because some become unruly - or draw a few individuals who are anti-social.

This blanket approach will have a cost. Not just economic.

I heard a brief item on the news yesterday that police were upset with people setting up Facebook pages to alert drivers to the whereabouts of alcohol check points.

The police are losing public support. If they treat us en masse like bad guys then they can expect a reaction.

Earlier this year I heard a second hand report of a police man being very fair to a young individual who he could clearly see broke the law by making a forgetful error. The officer exercised his judgement and did not throw the book at him.

Events should be treated similarly. Authorities could and should exercise some reasoned judgement and discretion.

Inculcating students and selling books

Two professors wrote a book called Urban poverty, penal welfare and health inequalities.

Here is a brief precis. I note,

"New Zealand’s once-humanitarian welfare system genuinely supported those in need, says Professor Darrin Hodgetts."

The thrust of the book is that welfare has become punitive and demeans those who need it.

The welfare system the professor refers to can only be that established in the late 1930s for the very reason that there was little support for the needy prior.

From that time until the 1960-70s it was impossible to get a sickness or invalid benefit if you could not prove you were of good moral character and had not been the active cause of your own misfortune. Specifically, "That incapacity for work was not self—induced or in any way brought about with a view to qualifying for an invalid's benefit."

You could not get a deserted wife benefit if you didn't apply for maintenance from the father of your children. Unmarried mothers frequently felt they had little choice but to give up their child for adoption.

Is this the "once-humanitarian" welfare system referred to?

Or was it the period before the early nineties when sole parents piled onto welfare at an astounding rate. So astounding that after only 2 years of the DPB, a ministerial inquiry was being called.

 As a result a stand-down period was established and marriage guidance counselling made effectively compulsory. Solo mothers protested. Is that the "once-humanitarian welfare system" referred to?

It can't be the system post early-1990s because that's after the benefits cuts -  the neoliberal policies that the book attacks - along with the current welfare system, those who designed the policies and deliver the services.

I don't believe the "once-humanitarian welfare system" ever existed. But that's not the point. That's just my opinion.

The point is this new book is required reading in course work (along with a plethora of other leftist claptrap).

No doubt the publishers were also well aware of guaranteed sales when accepting the manuscript.

Quote of the Day

 “It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.” 

Thomas Sowell (apparently retiring from writing his syndicated column aged 86. His brief farewell is also well worth a read.)

Ethnic variation of people not in labour force

Just before Xmas Stats NZ released a report about people not in the labour force. The graph that caught my eye is below:

At  a glance you could be forgiven for thinking that Europeans are spending a lot of time playing around while Maori, Pacific and Asian people spend a lot of time studying.

The explanation for the divergence is provided:

This difference for the European ethnic group can be attributed to its different age structure when compared with the other ethnic groups. The median age of the European people not in the labour force was 66 years in the September 2016 quarter. In contrast, the median age was 30 years for Pacific peoples, 32 years for Māori, and 33 years for the Asian ethnic group. If we restrict the population to only look at those aged under 65 years, then study or training is the most-common main activity, and looking after a child is the second most-common main activity for all four of the ethnic groups looked at.

The median age of European people not in the labour force is double - or more than double - that of the next three largest ethnic groups.

Astonishing variation, but when you think about it, not that surprising. The European dominance of the baby boomer ranks and older accounts for this large anomaly.

Life's ups and downs (Updated)

It hasn't been the happiest few weeks. We watched our beloved beagle Lexie slowly deteriorate with a suspected brain tumour and eventually had to let her go. RIP in the garden.

So last night provided some much-needed fun and excitement when the first horse I have ever had a share in, Everything, lined up at Alexandra Park. Having its first start (third in its career) since I have been involved in the syndicate, see what happens:


Update: Today (28th) Everything had his first start on a grass track. Out from the widest front-line draw and then broke a boring pole and had it flapping down in front of his knees for most of the journey. But he was unperturbed and again, won effortlessly. Unfortunately the bookies had him pegged this time and he went out hot favourite. Too short for me and I only took him in a quaddie and trifectas. I thought after the race, damn, I didn't make any money outright. Then I remembered -  I now get a share of the stake winnings!