Academia discovers reality

A comment on Kiwiblog and my reply:

Catgurl13

Labour made it so solo Mum’s don’t have to name the father’s of their children was the most stupid thing they have ever done. All it has done is encourage baby farming women to use children while on a benefit as income makers for them. A woman could have a child every couple of years to prevent them from working,all while the guy lives with them. At least that is what my neighbour has admitted to me. She said she has told MSD and HNZ she is a solo Mum while the 3 kids father is living there working full time(they are not married) So now she will never get caught doing it. She even tried to have a 4th kid last year but lost it. Then she’s always claiming poverty and not being able to afford to put the internet on there or to buy her 2 high school aged kids laptops or to fix their car. She is also driving unlicensed at 39ys old after being caught again recently. But she also said they spent 10k last year on a trip to Samoa for the 5 of them. She said she doesn’t feel.like working at the moment……makes me so mad but I can’t say anything since she told me not to.

Lindsay

Claiming sole parent benefit while partnered is widespread. In fact Auckland University of Technology knows it. Here they comment on the Growing Up in NZ longitudinal study which kicked off ten years ago: 

"The GUiNZ sample seems to have low sole-parent status compared to a 2009 study that found one-third of families with dependent children were headed by sole-parents (Ministry of Social Development, 2010). This could be because being partnered in the GUiNZ data is not the same as their domestic-purposes benefit status, from which partnership status is inferred by other studies. We find that 70% of those who say they receive the domestic-purposes benefit also answer yes to the question of whether they have a partner – confirming that the sole-parent status derived from GUiNZ is essentially different to those studies which rely on benefit status to infer partnership status.” 

Bingo!

Many more prisoners identifying as Ngapuhi

Corrections Volume Report 2019-20 has just been released. I had a quick scan through for anything particularly noticeable. These two graphs caught my eye:

(The Ngapuhi number is 609 - off the graph.)

The immediate inference is that iwi-affiliated offending and imprisonment is going through the roof. But consider this graph:

This is a conundrum. The iwi-identifying number is increasing whereas the Maori number is decreasing.

4,907 prisoners are Maori. 2,498 state one of the iwi affiliations above. About half.

My conclusion is that prisoners are increasingly identifying with an iwi. I wonder why? Bet there is some sort of incentive. Sudden radical changes in data are usually driven by a specific, but not necessarily obvious reason.

Is the Ngapuhi Treaty settlement actually going to happen??

But the plot thickens. In 2018, from the Minister:

Mr Davis said Māori make up over 50 percent of the prison population, and he wants that number reduced.

"Of that 50 percent, half again, are from Ngāpuhi, my own tribe, so this is personal.

"My tribe of Ngāpuhi is probably the most incarcerated tribe in the world, per head of population, so we really have to look at what we're going to do differently as a country, to turn these figures around."

Yet the just-released stats show there were 668 Ngapuhi prisoners in 2018.

Perhaps Mr Davis is encouraging the trend in order to validate his claim?

What was so offensive?

 I wrote the following letter to the DomPost which they published today:

You may well ask, clobbering ball for who?

My original letter said the statistic is "quickly becoming a clobbering ball for disaffected feminists."

The left of politics is dominated by them.

Censorship... 

Or paranoia on my part because they simply couldn't fit the extra three words in:-)

Labour: No target, no commitment, no improvement

The last National government set a series of Better Public Service targets. One was reducing working age benefit numbers to 220,451 by 2018. 

The National government was overt and explicit that reducing welfare dependency was desirable. Bill English was acutely aware of the role it plays in the many negative outcomes adults and children experience.

Labour took over in September 2017 and abandoned the targets. This particular administration has never committed to reducing benefit dependency.

And here's what happened next. I've picked up the line from December 2016 where the BPS graph finishes, and used the same scale on the vertical axis. 

A low of 273,387 was reached in March 2018 - 6 months after Labour took over. (A miss on National's  target by over 50,000.)

Since, the numbers have steadily risen (allowing for seasonal variation) well before the Covid response.

Name suppression

 Did anyone else notice that the killer of a New Zealand police officer in Croydon was named almost immediately whereas the killer of a New Zealand police officer in West Auckland still has name supression?

It's the trend that matters

There is glee at poll numbers which show Labour can govern alone.

But look at the trend. 

Labour down 10.8% points.

The Thursday poll preceding the leaders debate was similar. Labour down 5 points. That's what I think really threw the Labour leader and led to a tense, unconfident performance.

There's just under three weeks to go and the rate of fall is sharp.

Neither place is comfortable - on a low number rising or high number falling.

But I'm a stickler for trends.

Stuff stubbornly refuse to issue "any correction or clarification"

Last week I posted about one of Stuff's 'The Whole Truth' columns which attempted to fact-check Judith Collins' claim that 400 people a week are losing their jobs. The BFD subsequently picked up my post and a BFD reader complained to Stuff about their column. Stuff then went back and conflated their original workings with the grants data I had used (which is publicly available). The editor in charge of The Whole Truth project wrote to the complainant:

 "The total number of people granted either the JS benefit or CIRP since the beginning of lockdown (using figures from the week ended 27/3/20) is 136,724 (103,772 JS and 32952 CIRP). The number of people who have gone off one of those benefits into work ("cancelled into work") is 31,854."

The latter number is then subtracted. Subtracting "cancellations into work" is wrong. The people cancelling a benefit in any given week are not the people losing their jobs. This type of calculation might be made to estimate the jobs the economy is losing (net difference between jobs dis-established and jobs created) but it doesn't tell us how many people are losing their jobs each week. For argument's sake, hypothetically, 100 people might have found a job last week but that doesn't alter the fact that 400 people lost one.

Recall Stuff's original article states:

"It was a refrain she [Judith Collins] had repeated several times throughout the debate - 400 people a day are losing their jobs under the current government."

Back to Stuff's reply to the BFD reader:

"You then need to subtract the number of people who have been transferred from JS to CIRP or vice versa (5887) so you're not double-counting."

That leaves a total of 98,984 people either still receiving JS or CIRP or have had it cancelled/ended for another (unknown) reason. This equates to 572 people a day (173 days between 23 March and 11 September). This assumes that of those, the 36,300 people who were on a benefit but are not anymore are all still jobless.

However, as outlined in the post, this likely overestimates the number of people who are on a benefit because they have lost their jobs, because it counts all Jobseeker recipients. We highlighted 'work-ready' recipients, subtracting those on the JS benefit for a health or disability reason. Normally, the proportion of 'work-ready' JS recipients is about 57 per cent; this has increased to about 65 per cent during Covid.

Re-running the numbers using 65 per cent of the Jobseeker total, you end up with 62,670 people either still on CIRP or JS or who've gone off it for a reason other than finding a job. This is 362 people a day - pretty much the conclusion our original post arrived at (355 jobs a day).

So now they have reverted back to the initial data they used which is net numbers of people on the Jobseeker Benefit. Not grants.

Having found a way back to their original guestimate- albeit via a different method - the editor goes on the say,

"In our view, the substance of the original post is not affected by these alternative calculations...For this reason, I do not intend to update the post or issue any correction or clarification."

They should.

I'll try to be succinct.

The data they used in their second attempt, the data that matters,  shows 136,724 grants of JS or CIRP over 173 days. Subtract the transfers between the two - 5,887 - which leaves 130,837. Divide that by 173 days and the number is 756. I repeat, cancellations are irrelevant.

Additionally, on the plus side (indicating a higher number), Stuff does not know how many people have lost their jobs and

1/ gone on an emergency benefit (for eg non-residents)

2/ gone on a sole parent benefit because they are single with dependent children under 14

3/ gone on Super full-time

4/ returned to a Supported Living Payment (disabled people also work despite not being required to)

5/ not gone on any benefit because they have savings, a secondary source of income into the household, or other reason

6/ returned to or taken up study and gone onto a student allowance

This is not an exhaustive list of alternatives to going on either Jobseeker or CIRP.

On the minus side, there are overseas returnees going on the Jobseeker benefit. They too may have lost their jobs (mainly in Australia) though it might be a stretch to claim Judith was including those people. And there will be people transferring to a Jobseeker benefit from other benefits eg when a sole parent's youngest turns 14 the parent is transferred from Sole Parent Support to Jobseeker.

Finally, from a journalistic integrity viewpoint, Stuff's email acknowledges "...her claim of '400 jobs lost per day' is likely to be within the right ballpark of what is happening."

Yet the original Stuff article begins in bold with this line:

Many jobs are being lost as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. But not 400 a day.

It could be less. It could be more. Many more.

Stuff  need to acknowledge that the way they calculated how many people a week are losing their jobs was inadequate and therefore, inconclusive. Their article cannot represent 'The Whole Truth' when so many pieces of the jigsaw are missing.

Blinkers where they shouldn't be

An article discussing the 'right to silence' laws on the back of another clamour to have it removed in the case of child abuse deaths quotes  "law expert and recent Parole Board appointee Khylee Quince".

Abolishing the right to silence would also have “huge gender implications”, she says.

“No one abuses children without abusing mothers. It could make things worse for people ... in relationships of violence and coercive control where their whole lives are really framed around managing violence of a male partner or a male member of the household.”

In many instances, those women, or extended family, will have sought help previously or tried to raise red flags, and failed.

I wonder if she sits on any women's prison parole boards? Perhaps not.

Since first data was collected in 1967 women have been killing children too.

Granted mothers are more likely to kill their babies shortly after birth or in a murder/suicide situation but they are not exempt from killing them through abuse or neglect. Note also the relatively high number of non-mother female caregivers responsible for CAN deaths.

The telling number though is the one related to step-fathers. And deaths are just the tip of the abuse iceberg.

Of course, the use of the term 'step-father' here is quite a departure. Step-fathers used to describe men that married and took on their new wife's children, usually after she was widowed. More recently, after divorce. That's a committment.

Today 'step-fathers' are just as  likely to be shiftless, ill-motivated, individuals looking for regular sex and somewhere to park themselves rent-free. 

 

PM's perilous promise

Am I a bad person?

Because I would not don the hijab. Ever. It's not my culture, it has no meaning for me and while I accept someone else has reasons for wearing it, I don't share them.

True tolerance for each other would be demonstrated through side- by- side wearing of the hijab and going bare-headed.

The Al Noor mosque people are star-struck by Jacinda and she is besotted by them, and their terrible personal tragedies.

The senseless and violent murders that took away their family and friends forever were an evil act and must be an agony to live with. Our shared humanity as parents, children, brothers and sisters, tells us that.

But the risk of a repeat will never be eliminated by introducing hate speech laws. It could even be aggravated.

Yet that is what Jacinda promised the Muslim advocates for such a law change today. Down in Christchurch. In her hijab.

In France judges have ruled against implementation of recently introduced hate speech laws finding they did in fact impinge on freedom of speech:

The court said this [tech regulation] created an incentive for risk-averse platforms to indiscriminately remove flagged content, whether or not it was clearly hate speech.

The law’s provisions “therefore infringe upon the exercise of freedom of expression and communication in a way that is not necessary, suitable, and proportionate,” the court said in a statement.

New Zealand is still a free country (I write, with many 'buts' bumping around in my brain). And we will need to fight to remain so. We must not change our laws to appease groups whose safety will not be improved by the process. The PM must not emotionally over-identify with one group at great cost to the other. They need to learn, along with every other citizen, that laws have limitations in terms of desired effect, and that tolerance and persuasion are far more powerful impulses.

Boys, mistrust and violence

 A reader sent me this US 'City Journal' article, Breaking Things,  about boys, mistrust and violence.

We didn’t really believe that the adults in our lives cared about what we did. Seth got thrown out of his house and wouldn’t tell us why. Josh and Brandon’s dad had been divorced five times, and he was always traveling for work. My adoptive mother had recently moved to another town. When I called her every two weeks or so, I lied that my grades were good and that I was doing all my homework. Maybe if we did something severe enough, they would give us their attention. Maybe if we got into enough trouble, or needed enough help, they would be more like the parents we wanted. On some level, we had stopped caring about ourselves in order to get them to care for us. When adults let their children down, kids learn to make choices that let themselves down. Our disappointment with adults led us to believe that rules weren’t actually legitimate. They were invented by adults to keep us from having fun. Why should we listen? 

...Many pundits and commentators focus on economic deprivation or sociocultural factors—above all, racism—to explain the recent wave of urban anger, triggered by Floyd’s awful death. But the data show that American society has fewer people in poverty and less bigotry compared with decades past; and police use of force is far less pervasive than it was during higher-crime periods. What has been getting far worse, however, is family life. Stable families have been in free fall over the last few decades. In 1960, the out-of-wedlock birthrate in the U.S. was 3 percent. In 2000, it was about 30 percent. Today, it is 40 percent. (This figure obscures class divisions: for college graduates, only one out of ten children is born out of wedlock. For those with only a high school diploma, six out of ten are born to unmarried parents.)

The lack of stable families has contributed to the widespread mistrust of others and lack of social relationships among young people. It has, I believe, given rise to a sense of nihilism even in an era of relative material abundance, which has characterized some of the violent upheavals.

I concur with the writer. It's childhood stability that protects against negative social outcomes. The main change in my thinking about it over twenty years is that a stable lone parent is better than a lone parent who goes through a series of relationships. And better than a two parent family where the parents are at war with each other. Above all children need  a parent or caregiver who prioritises them above all else.

Stuff fact-checks Judith Collins' claim "400 people a day are losing their jobs"

 After looking solely at Jobseeker Benefit and Covid Income Relief Payment numbers the Stuff journalist says,

Many jobs are being lost as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. But not 400 a day.

Towards the conclusion of the first leaders’ debate, Judith Collins said “the fact” that 400 people are losing their jobs every day is the thing that matters most to her this election.

It was a refrain she had repeated several times throughout the debate - 400 people a day are losing their jobs under the current government.

There is no argument that many, many people are out of work because of Covid-19; either laid off or on severely reduced hours. But are 400 people really losing their jobs every day?

The writer did not take this graph into account.

1,350 of the 4,123 grants were transfers from CIRP. That still leaves 555 jobs a day in a five day week (396 in a 7 day week).

Then there were an additional 1,206 CIRP grants suggesting a further 241 redundancies (or 172 in a 7 day week).

The trap the journalist has fallen into is looking only at net numbers - the difference between grants and cancels. Neither does she consider that some who lose their job will go on other benefits such as the emergency and sole parent support benefits. Or they might not even go on a benefit if it was a part-time second household income job.

Some grants will also be to people returning from overseas but they are still often people who have lost their jobs - just not in this economy!

If anything Judith may be understating it. Substantially.

Jacinda vs Judith: What a reveal

There's a lady on her way to the UN world stage. Jacinda told how the world is acclaiming and depending on us to lead climate change.

Judith on the other hand has NZ's interests first, especially farmers and small business owners.

The commentators following are quite critical of Jacinda seeming passionless. Not living up to her 'great communicator' reputation.

Ardern is simply not up to criticism and quick riposte. She kept looking to her right after questions. I don't know if those posing the questions were on set or on screen. But she needs physical affirmation.

She's spent too much time amongst accolytes. 

Judith hasn't.

Finding the answer you want and making the pieces fit

 Two more child abuse deaths and people start writing columns blaming social inequality. Here's an example published today:

But the issue is much more complicated than blaming dysfunctional parenting and family dynamics. Child abuse is more likely to happen in societies with high levels of social inequality.

Intentional maltreatment death rates more than doubled in New Zealand in the 1980s - co-incidentally the same decade that neo-liberal economic policies were rolled out. The focus on neoliberal policies is on economic growth, with the idea that the 'trickle down' effect will lift all people.

It doesn't quite work like that. Since the 1980s we have had increasing levels of social inequality, child poverty and child abuse and deaths. Correlation is not necessarily causation, but in this case research demonstrates a strong link between social inequality and abuse.

Let's stop there. The writer is roughly correct in one respect: "Intentional maltreatment death rates more than doubled in New Zealand in the 1980s."

After halving in the prior period.

The writer wants neolibralism to be the explanation for this scourge but it isn't.

Changing demographics could sort the housing crisis

We will have to wait a while but won't demographics eventually fix the housing crisis?

We have a very top-heavy population pyramid. NZ had the largest baby boom in the western world with respect to family size.

And the fastest growing household type is single.

I assume this reflects more widows/widowers, family breakdown and fewer people ever partnering.

The second  two trends will probably continue but as they do, more people are going to die (as a % of the population).

Fertility is trending down quite rapidly.

More deaths and fewer births will eventually solve the housing crisis.

Many of those retirement villages will be repurposed and more rental properties should be come available as inheritors become inadvertant landlords.

I  haven't however factored in immigration which could utterly negate my theory.

My guess is NZ will continue to attract and encourage high levels of foreign-born incomers because we want and need them.

So I have probably just written a pointless post. 

Beliefs that fly in the face of evidence

 According to the British Adam Smith Institute:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the UK is in something of a housing crisis. Home ownership has been declining for half a century. 90% of 25-34 year olds face average regional housing prices 3 to 4 times their income, up from less than half 20 years ago. Rent as a share of income has been rising, making the prospect of saving for mortgage deposit increasingly remote. 

Odd. Afterall the United Kingdom has a capital gains tax, apparently the solution to our housing crisis.

Unable to gain popular support for one here, Ardern still believes NZ should do the same:

Despite ruling out ever introducing a capital gains tax, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern still believes New Zealand should have one.

Asked on Newshub Nation if she had "betrayed" Labour supporters by canning plans to introduce one after the 2020 election, Ardern said no.

"I've certainly not had that feedback from people that they take that view," she told host Simon Shepherd on Saturday morning.

"Did I believe in it? Yes. Still do."

 

Stuff: "Little evidence of child poverty coming down"

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.

Where does NZ's GDP drop sit comparatively?

NZ's  GDP fell by 12.2% in the June Quarter.

Here are some other country comparisons:

(Click on source for interactive image)

The yellow bar (10.7%) represents the average of the G7 countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US

Taxation out. Revenue Raising in.

Have you noticed that Labour no longer has a Tax Policy - only a Revenue Policy? Grant Robertson uses the term constantly. Now I see the Greens have joined in with a press release entitled, All Healthy, Now We Need To Revenue Raise.

They sound like a charity talking about the need to fundraise. But that involves persuading people to part with their money for a worthy cause.

Revenue raising requires legislated forcible removal of poeple's wealth for expenditure they may not agree with or benefit from. 

How stupid do they think we are?

Tax wasn't love and neither is revenue raising.

PREFU forecasts

Forecasts of Jobseeker and Emergency benefit numbers over the next few years are very fluid.

According to today's PREFU:

"The number of Jobseeker Support and Emergency Benefit recipients is expected to increase by 89,000 by 2020/21 compared with 2019/20 and then increase further in 2021/22 to peak at 279,000, before reducing to 246,000 recipients by 2023/24, 84,000 (an increase of 52%) more recipients than 2019/20." P56

That immediately struck me as lower than prior forecasts. This chart shows the earlier BEFU forcast:

Personally I still think it is too early to make any reasonable projections. 

You might argue the PREFU projection is more optimistic in the short term (more politically palatable?) but it is more pessimistic in the longer term.

 

Stop the world, I wanna get off

I've become a huge golf fan. Because I started playing. 

A close childhood friend came from Australia to celebrate our sixtieth birthdays together and she brought me her old clubs. Checked them in on her flight ensconsed in a bag and carrier. 

Briefly, around 32, I played for a few months and introduced her to the game. Then I got married, had a family and never held a club again. But she did. And she brought me her old clubs (replaced by a new supa dupa set) to rekindle my interest and entice me to go on an Australian golfing holiday with her at some future date.

So I joined the Hutt Park Club which has a slightly rumpty 9 hole course with a primary retail operation and driving range. Now I am addicted.

Every night I watch various instalments of the Master's Tournament. The players are my characters. It's like watching movies. Who will beat adversity this time? Who will hold his nerve this time?

Anyway, I'll get to the point of my post.

I'm watching the crowds following Tiger Woods ... in any of the five years in which he won the Green Jacket. And soaking up the sheer exuberance of the fans, his family and Tiger himself when he finally let's the emotion erupt at the 18th.

Is this jubilant, pressing crowd, thousands spread across the course, a thing of the past?

Are we ever going to come back to our senses as a world and relish what we love?

Golf is currently my thing. But you must have had that moment when you stopped in your tracks and said to yourself, "Is pre-Covid the freest we were ever going to be?"

Because it's not just Covid. We're are all well aware of it.

It's social media mindless collectivism which is powerful beyond reason. Think about that. Power beyond reason.

What is going to happen to Comedy in this aggressive, angry, anti-self expression age? When on-line self-appraised 'benign' bullies wield more power than those they wrongly label 'racists, xenophobes and misogynists.'

As we are progressively  sometimes literally held responsible for the so-called sins of our great grand fathers and denied the products of their culture, what great new standard is it we will all be made to hold ourselves to?

Can we not be imperfect humans, irrevant humans, irascible humans, imaginative humans from here on in?

If not, I'll vacate far more happily than should be the case.