Children's Commissioner gets it right - and then horribly wrong

I posted yesterday about the child poverty stats and why they are a joke. While recalibration shows better reduction, nothing materially changes for children.  Here's the Children's Commissioner on the same subject:

“A different number behind a decimal point doesn’t change things for the thousands of tamariki and whanau doing it tough. Children who are growing up in a motel, or whose families are struggling to pay for the basics, still need big bold changes to unlock opportunities to live their best lives."

Correct.

But then he plunges headlong down the leftist rabbit hole:

 “Government efforts to target poverty reduction, improve incomes through the families’ package, expand the school lunch programme and peg benefits to wages have created the strongest foundations for making progress on poverty in decades.

“Poverty and hardship rates, particularly among Māori, Pacific and disabled children are still unacceptably high.

“We want to see benefits raised in line with the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, and a major shift in the availability of social and affordable housing for whānau."

So his solution is greater dependence on the state. Bigger benefits means more children growing up on benefits. 

There is so much documented evidence, here and internationally, that shows benefit dependence - especially long-term - is detrimental to children's outcomes.

Benefits erode family cohesion and they discourage work.

I had high hopes for Andrew Becroft, who back in relatively sane times was outspoken about the young people who appeared before him in the Youth Court. He identified an absence of fathers as the most common factor in their troubled backgrounds. If he hadn't connected that to the state's encouragement of single parent families through the DPB then he must be wilfully blind.

Perhap he is. As Children's Commissoner he is now actively calling for more of the same medicine despite known adverse side effects outweighing any advantage.

Moving people off benefit is "the old paradigm"

MSD set up a division of case managers to work with people who enter the benefit system very young and/or are "entrenched" beneficiaries. They have a smaller caseload and can work more intensively on other barriers to work the client is experiencing.

A qualitative evaluation of the service has been published and (perhaps understandably)  there seems to be no overall data regarding how successful the programme was/is in getting people independent. 

"Time off-benefit for clients assigned to the ICS treatment group, as compared to those assigned to the control group (and who continue to receive services as normal), is the key metric by which the success of the ICS trial is assessed.7"

Go to footnote 7 to find:

"7 Ministry of Social Development: Intensive Client Support (ICS) Trial Evaluation: Interim 12 Months Evaluation, pg 23. Unpublished internal report." 

Perhaps the quantitative data will come later. We are told, "Of the 26 trial participants interviewed for this research, seven had achieved off-benefit outcomes, although three had subsequently returned to the benefit, one having lost their job, one returning due to an injury, and one due to seasonal work finishing."

Not flash. But the case managers evaluate their own success differently. Two views:

I must resist any pressure from certain staff who are still in the old paradigm of just moving people off benefit as quickly as possible. It’s not about numbers, these are people. They’re people who, if you don’t do anything with them, sure, will cost the government over their lifetime. But the downstream effects are not just one benefit for a lifetime, it’s use of the criminal justice system, their children’s failures and risks. Who cares if they stay on a benefit if it means they don’t go back to jail, if they can get help for their trauma in childhood, if they learn to read and write better so they feel more positive, if they are able to leave the house more. It’s about improving their lives to make society better. (ICSM)

Measuring success rates are quite difficult because who says they’ve done well, and how is that measured? And that’s quite hard for your personal development to go “Oh well I’ve got so many people, this person has been showing up to appointments” and so that’s an achievement to me. But my manager’s like “no, how many people have you got into work?” (ICSM) 

Isn't this illuminating?

On the one hand I have some sympathy for their efforts and priorities. And of course, behind the numbers are real people.

But it also concerns me that the damage the benefit system has done in some families and sectors is so great, self-sufficiency is now a secondary consideration. Just rescuing some people from themselves is enough.

If  'moving people off benefit' is the "old paradigm" have we lost the battle?

When I worked with beneficiaries I resisted trying to solve their problems by trying to get more WINZ money or a food parcel. I tried to help them find practical solutions or make better decisions. But I eventually identified that the biggest obstacle to them making changes was the guarantee of cash in their bank account every week regardless of how they lived their lives. Not uniformly but typically.

Child poverty stats

Child poverty stats are a joke.

If grown-ups get collectively poorer, children get richer (relatively).

Never has this been better illustrated than by a just-announced Stats NZ cock-up.

They have recalibrated recently released child poverty stats and they are better than initially thought. How convenient.

Treasury , "identified several respondents incorrectly reporting the superannuation payments they received, resulting in double counting their income from superannuation, which has also been resolved in this corrected release.

The corrections resulted in a change to the median income for the year ended June 2020, which is used to provide the thresholds for child poverty reporting. The median equivalised disposable household income for the year ended June 2020 before housing costs are deducted reduced from $42,486 to $41,472. After housing costs are deducted, it reduced from $32,579 to $31,717."

If the threshold goes down, fewer children fall below it.

None of this makes children materially any better off.

But it might make the PM puff her chest out.

Stand by.

Benefits stats and some aberrations

 Here's National on the March quarter benefit stats:

Labour Mislead on Negative Statistics Again

Labour’s celebratory social media posts touting a “record 32,880 people moved into work” are disingenuous and only tell one part of the story, National’s Social Development & Employment spokesperson Louise Upston says.

“What Labour aren’t telling us, is that more people were put on a benefit than moved into work across the same time period. That’s 46,437 additional people moving on to benefits.

Yes, it is correct that 46,437 grants of benefits occurred during the March 2021 quarter.

But during the same period there were 60,573 cancellations of benefits.

That's net 14,136 fewer people on benefits. And for a March quarter 32,880 moving into work is a record for the last 6 years. 

That is what Labour is crowing about.

Now if you want to make comparisons to when Labour took office, or the degree of dependence in respect of how long people are staying on benefits, that's another matter....

 If I was putting a question to the minister I'd be asking what happened to the blue lines. Why no cancellations due to benefit reviews or health improvements?

I went into the data tables for a look:

Something very odd about those two categories.

As far as I am aware benefits are still reviewed annually. Most have to be re-applied for after 52 weeks.  And one assumes that a failure to present a medical certificate for  benefit requiring one would typically lead to X amount of cancellations as per past March quarters.

Maybe some porcedures went West during Covid and just haven't been reinstated since.

Benefit increases we don't hear about

MSD has just released a report into how Labour's Families Package has affected incomes of parents with infants in the first six months post-birth. The first table compares mothers with children born in 2017 with mothers with children born in 2018. It uses data from a 3 month cohort pre July 1. The reason for this is that the Best Start payment didn't kick in till July 1, 2018.

Those recieving the largest increase in absolute terms were beneficiary, and by ethnicity, Maori.

Then the study examines the effect of the Best Start payment post July 1 which is "in addition to income gains from other parts of the Families Package":

The Best Start payment is $60 weekly in the first year but it may be offset by adjustments to other assistance. For instance:

...some families receiving a benefit or with a low income lost Temporary Additional Support – this is a payment of last resort that is withdrawn dollar-for-dollar as income from other sources, including Best Start and other Working for Families tax credits, increases

• some families appear to have also lost Accommodation Supplement income

Nevertheless the net increase in incomes for all mothers, but especially mothers on a benefit, is considerable.

The  study also examined whether the 4 week extension to Paid Parental Leave had the intended effect of allowing mothers a longer bonding period.

"The size of the effect on months with no wages and salaries appears small [0.21 of a month] relative to the four-week extension in paid parental leave made available to parents in 2018. One possible explanation is that recent inflation in house prices and rents worked in opposition to the policy reform."

Pretty much a policy fail there. 

The next report will be of great interest when the effect of increased incomes on the health and well-being of the children is assessed.

Another policy fail is entirely possible.

Also, look out for the Child Poverty Action Group and other anti-poverty advocates kicking up a stink when the first recipients of Best Start (3 year entitlement) lose the income from July 1 this year. That's what they did when the Winter Energy payment stopped last year.

With friends like that Labour doesn't need enemies.

Covid 19 vaccination rates by ethnicity

 Regular readers will know I love data. It's like a toy you can play with in different ways. The visual representation relays speedily what raw numbers do not. So for no other reason, I was drawn to this chart and thought others may be interested:

Latest benefit numbers

Three graphs for you from March quarter benefit fact sheets released today.

Unsurprisingly, large increase in Jobseeker numbers year-on-year. Though on an optimistic note the numbers are slightly below what Treasury was forecasting:

Note the massive increase in emergency housing expenditure:

And the overall picture...

What happens to children of beneficiaries?

In regard to my last post questioning what children learn from beneficiary mothers with ingrained helplessness and over-developed senses of entitlement, a commentor, Sam, asked "What happens to children of beneficiaries when they become adults?"

I am aware of various NZ research which answers the question.

Broadly speaking, the longer the parent is dependent, the worse the risk of inter-generational dependence becomes.

While Bill English was Finance Minister there were multiple actuarial reports into the benefit system.

From 2015:

"New analysis this year shows that just under half of all children born in 1993/94 and 1994/95 with a parent on benefits during their childhood went on to become beneficiaries themselves before age 23; 75% of those from long-term benefit families."

And:

About three quarters of current clients aged 16 to 25 (for whom data is available) had a parent who received benefits during their childhood. 45% of the overall liability for all beneficiaries under age 25 is associated with children from families that received benefits for 80% or more of their teen years. 

Perhaps most telling, the following graph shows the probability of a child entering the benefit by the number of years their parent is on welfare (SPS = Sole Parent Support). 

A child who has spent all or most of their life dependent on their parent's benefit is very likely to migrate onto their own benefit as a young adult. In my experience as a volunteer it wasn't uncommon to find the parent encouraging this event as it upped the household income.

The occurrence of inter-generational benefit receipt is now well-documented.For other research see links here.

But a happy story to finish with. One of my clients (then on a benefit but now working) was very unhappy when WINZ advised her son he'd be better off on a benefit than working part-time. This because of the board she was making him pay. She was trying to instill a different set of values, while I was helping him produce and print a decent CV. That was maybe 14-15 years ago. Last year the same young man and his partner bought their first home.

Where and when will it end?

Here is a mother on a Sole Parent Support benefit. She has four children and debt to MSD of nearly $10,000. She repays $46 out of the basic benefit of $386 each week and says, 

"It’s a big difference 'cause we need that money. It’s not enough, even the benefits not enough. If they cannot do anything then we’re going to need a new Government that cares." 

Put aside that on top of the basic weekly rate of $386.78 she'll receive:

Souh Auckland accommodation Supplement = $305 max

Family tax credits for four children = $386.79

That's $1,078.57

And putting aside that there are many other top-ups including for non-repayable grants rent, food, etc...

Where is the father or fathers of her four children?

Why has she no sense of personal agency?

Where did she learn the mindset of entitlement?

What are her four children learning from her?

And why do idiot journalists frame her situation (and thousands of others) as being put into debt by the government because they don't earn enough on their benefit? (You'll have to watch the newsclip for that additional contortion of the facts).

ACT MP Karen Chhour off to a good start

 From Newshub:

ACT is accusing Labour MP Willie Jackson of "perpetuating a victimhood mentality" for saying we have "institutional racism" in "every area of New Zealand society"...

...ACT's Social Development and Children spokesperson Karen Chhour calls these "inflammatory comments" which will "only perpetuate a victimhood mentality".

"Constantly blaming racism for the problems faced by Māori is wrong. We can't move forward as a nation if that is our only response," she says in a statement.

"Rather than using such divisive language, our Government should be uniting New Zealanders behind good ideas that lift everyone up.

"Jackson's comments also promote a narrative that all Māori are the same and that we don't have our own individual aspirations." 

Chhour criticised Jackson, saying Labour had shown it doesn't believe in 'by Māori, for Māori' solutions in the past.

"[Jackson's] waatea (organisation) sponsored a charter school, but his own party completely opposed the concept and shut it down," Chhour says.

"Labour likes to believe it is the saviour of Māori, but it clearly has no idea how to fix our country's deeply-ingrained problems."

Karen is totally sincere in her comments. I have been meaning to put up her Maiden Speech and now is a good time to do it. Too often children are politicised. They are used to promote leftist ideology: greater state redistribution of wealth. Chhour's speech left me in no doubt that she actually does want to improve children's lives, especially Maori children.

The worst form of racism

The worst form of racism perpetrated against Maori is that "they all think the same way."

They don't. Never have and never will.

I was just watching this Billy Te Kahika episode from Christchurch today.

Yet another freedom of speech issue. Another case of  'social media'  quashing real life gatherings.

We all have to rally behind the freedom to speak and be heard. 

If we allow ourselves to be divided racially by political manipulation (current modus operandi), we get weaker - not stronger.

Sexist, ageist AND racist

 Is it interesting that of those people convicted of breaching covid 19 restrictions 

- most were men

- around half were under 30

- around half were Maori.

Pretty much the same story as other crime.

Proves yet again the justice system is institutionally sexist, ageist AND racist!

(And before anyone thinks I am condoning people being convicted of breaching covid 19 restrictions, I fully expect that they were concurrent charges to some other law-breaking offences).

Damien Grant nails it

Great column from Damien Grant this morning. It nails the frustration that those of us older than most current  MPs feel.

"One of the economic lessons we are determined not to learn is that government cannot regulate prosperity. Each generation must learn, from scratch, this lesson. Helpfully, we already know the script.

A successful economy is, over time, corroded by a growing layer of restrictions. Each set of regulations imposes an unintended and unanticipated cost or outcome. This necessitates further rules and government oversight. Eventually the entire system becomes so overwhelmed that it either grinds to a halt or there is a sudden and dramatic economic liberalisation."

More

Sense out of Britain which seems to be re-gaining its wits faster than some other countries

 According to today's Economist

A commission in Britain that was created after last year’s Black Lives Matter protests to investigate racial disparities concluded that race is less important than social class and family structure in explaining inequality. On schooling, the report found that most children from ethnic-minority groups did as well or better than their white peers. It added that the catch-all term BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) was not very useful. The report contradicted the claims of critical race theorists, some of whom claim that white privilege is the prime cause of most disparities.

It's lengthy and I have only scanned through it but the conclusion, which I've reproduced here in full gives some idea of the clarity of thought and open-mindedness demonstrated by the commissioners. You can download the report from:

"We have tried in this report to present a new race agenda for the country, relevant to people from all backgrounds.

Rather than just highlighting minority disparities and demanding the government takes action, we have tried to understand why they exist in the first place.

That has meant some challenging conversations about today’s complex reality of ethnic advantage and disadvantage, a reality no longer captured by the old idea of BAME versus White Britain.

We have focused not just on persistent race-based discrimination but on the role of cultural traditions, including family, within different minority groups, the overlap between ethnic and socio-economic disadvantage, and the agency we have as individuals and groups.

And we believe that perhaps more than previous reports on these issues a degree of optimism is justified. Our agenda is rooted in the significant progress we have made as well as the challenges that remain.

We were established as a response to the upsurge of concern about race issues instigated by the BLM movement. And we owe the mainly young people behind that movement a debt of gratitude for focusing our attention once again on these issues.

But most of us come from an older generation whose views were formed by growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. And our experience has taught us that you do not pass on the baton of progress by cleaving to a fatalistic account that insists nothing has changed.

And nor do you move forward by importing bleak new theories about race that insist on accentuating our differences. It is closer contact, mutual understanding across ethnic groups and a shared commitment to equal opportunities that has contributed to the progress we have made.

Too many people in the progressive and anti-racism movements seem reluctant to acknowledge their own past achievements, and they offer solutions based on the binary divides of the past which often misses the point of today’s world.

We have paid close attention to the data and tried to avoid sweeping statements or over-ambitious targets and recommendations. Instead, our recommendations have tried to account for the messy reality of life and have been aimed, where possible, at everyone who is disadvantaged, not just those from specific ethnic groups.

Many of our recommendations, on Class B drugs or extending school hours for example, are aimed especially at the COVID-blighted generation of young people. Others focus on better use of data and the development of digital tools to promote fairness at work or for keeping young people out of trouble.

We have also acknowledged where we do not know enough and called for further research on what works in promoting fairness at work, and the role of the family and the reasons behind the success of those minority groups that have been surging forward into the middle class and the elite.

We focused our recommendations on the 4 broad categories of change that the Commission wishes to affect – build trust, promote fairness, create agency, and achieve inclusivity – and never assumed that minorities are inert victims of circumstance. As mentioned in the foreword the fact that most of us are successful minority professionals has no doubt shaped this thinking. And our experience of ethnic minority Britain from the inside makes it obvious to us that different groups are distinguished in part by their different cultural patterns and expectations, after all that is what multiculturalism was supposed to be about. It is hardly shocking to suggest that some of those traditions can help individuals succeed more than others.

Beneath the headlines that often show egregious acts of discrimination, the Windrush scandal most recently, incremental progress is being made as our report has shown beyond doubt. Through focusing on what matters now, rather than refighting the battles of the past, we want to build on that progress.

Finally, a thanks to all those individuals and organisations from across the country who gave us their time to to share their perspectives and evidence, and explain how their inspiring projects are helping to build a fairer Britain.

The year 2022 promises to be a special one: a new energy as we are fully released from COVID captivity, The Queen’s 70th Jubilee and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. And we hope it will be infused with the spirit of British optimism, fairness and national purpose that was captured by that 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, and has animated this report."

April 1 marks another egregious error by this government

Indexing benefits to wages last year set a precedent. They've been indexed to inflation since 2001 but indexing to wages had always been resisted.

For many people the margin between income from a benefit and income from work is a cost they are prepared to pay. Fix that margin and they will always be prepared to pay it. Increase the margin and work becomes attractive.

Covid highlighted NZ's heavy reliance on imported workers in areas where benefit dependence is also high. With benefits linked to wages, that's the way it will stay.

The previous Labour government (a godsend compared to this lot) understood the importance of keeping a margin:

 "...it is desirable to create a margin between being dependent on a benefit and being in employment....

The Labour Party isn’t the party that says living on a benefit is a preferred lifestyle. Its position has always been that the benefit system is a safety net for those who are unavoidably unable to participate in employment. From its history, the Labour Party has always been about people in employment."

Michael Cullen, 2008

Not Jacinda's Labour Party.

Herbie in stages

 Having a bit of a tidy up when I came across these photos which show the development of one of my favourite subjects and paintings, Herbie:

PM's office trys to spin with non-existent data

The PM's office was trying to get data to show that rents have risen in line with wage increases apparently. PM's chief press secretary Andrew Campbell asks in an email mistakenly sent to Stuff:

“Can we get a table rent increases year on year since been in Govt year on year compared to increase in wages and house prices [sic]. My understanding rents have been in line with average wage growth and obviously a lot less than house price growth...Do we know if our rent increases have been in line with increases under National? If they have been that would be good to point out,” he said.

Well you definitely cannot point it out for Auckland or Wellington:

 The PM and her operatives don't fill you with confidence do they?

Labour thinks landlords are pernicious cash cows

A media report yesterday talked about landlords "threatening" to hike rents in response to to Labour's closing the "loophole" of loan interest deductibility.

Both of those terms are misleading. The first is an effort to paint landlords as thugs. The second, as tax dodgers.

Landlords with mortgaged properties will have no choice but to hike rents or sell. They cannot simply absorb further expenses. For instance, the government never mentions how quickly insurance has escalated.  And rental property insurance is more expensive than owner occupied insurance. Meanwhile rates continue to grow over and above the inflation rate. Not to mention the significant property maintenance costs imposed by this government.

I can't wait to stop being a landlord. The only reason we are hanging in there is because we care about our tenants and don't want to evict them. 

Stark contrast between the birth places of Maori and NZ European babies

Over the ten year period to 2018, births of NZ European babies were reasonably evenly spread across the economic deciles with the fewest being born in the least deprived decile - the poorest neighbourhood.

For Maori babies the reverse is true. The highest percentage are born in the poorest decile.

More than one in four Maori babies is born in the poorest area compared to one in twenty NZ European babies.

What a stark contrast.

Source

Proportion of Maori living in an owner-occupied dwelling increased between 2013 and 2018

 Statistics New Zealand compiled a report called Housing in Aotearoa 2020 which is full of interesting data. This graph painted a slightly different picture from what might be expected.

 Between the 2013 and 2018 census the proportion of Maori, Pacific, and MELAA ( Middle-eastern, Latin American and African) people living in a home they owned actually increased slightly.  Another interpretation could be more people are crowding into owner occupied dwellings. 

And of course, matters will have changed again since 2018.

For context here's the longer view (unfortunately not available by ethnicity):