To work or not to work - what is the government trying to incentivise?

This is intriguing.

Below are the rates for the Youth Parent Payment:

Category		Net	Gross
Sole parent, 16 to 17 years, living with or supported by parents who earn less than the Family Tax Credit threshold		$137.47	$153.60
Married, civil union or de facto couple (with children)	Total	$343.68	$384.00
	Each	$171.84	$192.00
Sole parent		$295.37	$335.18
Hospital rate		$42.64	$47.64

$295.37 is exactly the same as Sole Parent Support.

Regarding the YPP, the Minister asked for an abatement free threshold of $203.15 per week (before tax) here. That was implemented according to the Youth Service website.

But someone on the Sole Parent Support benefit has an abatement free threshold of only $100. According to WINZ:

 You can get up to $5,200 a year (before tax) in additional money (for example from working) before your benefit payment is affected, and $20 more a week if you have childcare costs.

This puts the YPP beneficiary at a distinct financial advantage and I am trying to understand the thinking behind it. Back to the cabinet paper:

I'm just not getting this.

The party you want to work less you allow to earn more and vice versa?

The more I learn about this new benefit, the more it baffles me. The Minister has aligned the abatement threshold with the student allowance. But the threshold applies whether or not the recipient is a student. With only a small in-hand allowance the parent is going to be incentivised to earn. That's good. Let's face it. A lot of these young people aren't interested in tertiary education.

But what happens when they turn 19 or 20? They start losing their benefit. Back to the old problem of 'it's not worth working.' Most will still have children young enough that they won't have to either.

Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall during some of the discussions surrounding these reforms?

Once governments begin intervening there is no end to it. And the more they intervene, the more contradictions and inconsistencies abound.

90 percent of teenage parents on welfare haven't met obligations

From August 20, 2012 teenage parents requiring financial assistance were put on the Young Parent Payment (YPP).

At the end of March 2013 there were 1,346 YPP recipients.

56 percent were Maori.

6 percent were male.

87 percent were living in the North Island.

Each YPP recipient has a Youth Service provider who manages their benefit. Up to $50 a week is paid as a personal allowance.  This is a relatively small amount of cash compared to the previous system whereby the beneficiary would receive all of their benefit in cash.

The parent can earn up to $200 weekly without it affecting their benefit however.

As well, they can earn incentive payments to increase their weekly benefit.

For the sake of clarity the following is the OIA information MSD provided:

Parenting incentive payment

A young person can earn the parenting incentive payment after three months of engaging with a service provider if:

- they are receiving the Young Parent Payment
- they have participated in and completed a parenting education programme
- their dependent child/ren are enrolled with a primary health organisation
- their dependent child/ren aged 5 years or under are up-to-date with their Well Child/Tamariki Ora checks
- their child/ren under 5 years attends an approved early childhood education programme or is placed in other suitable childcare while the young person is in education, training, work-based learning or part-time work.

This poses the question, do they need to meet all these requirements to get the incentive payment? Here's the information provided at the youth service website:

Incentives

You can get a further $10 a week if you meet all your parenting requirements and have regular talks with your Youth Service provider for three months. Once you are getting the extra payments you need to keep up the good work. You will lose the incentive payments if you don’t.

So all requirements must be met. (There are two other distinct incentives as well - Education and Budgeting.)

At the end of March only 139 people on the YPP were receiving incentive payments. One in ten.

Interpreted another way, 90 percent of teenage parents receiving YPP are not meeting basic parenting obligations.

Additionally, I understood these obligations had to be met to avoid sanctions. Here's the youth service advice:

Parenting

To help you as a parent, you have to complete a parenting course. Your Youth Service provider will find a suitable course for you.
It is important that your child can get medical care when they need it so you have to enrol them at a Primary Health Organisation medical centre or doctor.
You also have to register your child (or children) under five with a Well Child provider, like Plunket, and make sure they have regular check-ups with this provider until they are five years old.
While you are in education, training or doing part time work your child has to go to an early childhood education programme or be in suitable childcare.

 

What happens if you don’t meet your obligations?

The first and second time you don’t meet your obligations your weekly allowance will be suspended and any extra incentive payments you have earned will be stopped. You have four weeks to put it right. If you still have not done what is required your ongoing access to the Young Parent Payment will be looked at.

Which leads to a further question (as my OIA requests inevitably do). How many people on YPP have been sanctioned?

(If you are wondering why my data is months old, I requested it on 26 April 2013 and finally received a reply on 12 August, 2013).

DPB and child conduct disorder

MSD has just released research findings into the Incredible Years pilot programme which works with the parents of children with  conduct problems.


The recruited population was not large (166) but it's interesting to note that in regard to parental income, 34 pecrent of the parents/caregivers relied on the domestic purposes benefit.

How does that compare to the general population of parents with dependent children?

The NZ Income Survey showed that in June 2012 there were 585,500 households with dependent children. At the same time, around 100,000 people received income from the DPB. I accept in some cases two recipients could share a household, but roughly speaking 17 percent of parents with dependent children rely on the DPB. Yet of the children with conduct disorder, 34 percent had a parent on the DPB.

Being utterly unscientific one might conclude that children on the DPB are twice as likely to have conduct problems. Doesn't sound unreasonable.

Anyway the good news is the programme made a positive difference for both Maori and non-Maori parents and children.

Turei and Turia on the removal of Maori children by the state

According to the NZ Herald today Metiria Turei and Tariana Turia are back on the old issue of Maori children and Maori responsibility. They want whanau, iwi and hapu to have more input into the decision to remove a child from its home. My instinctive response is whanau, iwi and hapu should have had more input before the removal of the child.

Extra iwi oversight is needed over new, permanent out-of-family placements for Maori children who are three times as likely to be removed from their families as non-Maori, the Green Party says.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett yesterday unveiled new laws that would prevent some parents from having access to any future children and would see more children permanently taken away from their families.
Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said extra care is needed to ensure Maori children are genuinely better off in the state's care.
Ms Turei's comments echo those of Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia, that the State was too quick to take Maori children away from their families and extended communities.
Ministry of Social Development statistics show about 4000 children - about half of whom are Maori - are in out-of-home placements.
Maori children make up about 25 per cent of the child population in New Zealand, so are three times as likely as non-Maori to be in out of home care, Ms Turei said.

Maori children make-up 21 percent  of the child population actually but in any event the size of the population has nothing to do with the greater likelihood they will be put into out of home care. The reason they are more likely to be removed by the state is that Maori children are more likely to be abused or neglected. There's no other way to cut it.

"Of course, Child Youth and Family must act to protect Maori children, and all Kiwi kids, when they are in danger.
"But given the huge over-representation of Maori children in the state's care, whanau, iwi and hapu must have additional guarantees they'll be involved in any decision to remove a child from their home.
"The prospect of more Maori children being raised in strangers' homes is hugely concerning," she said.

The alternative is perhaps worse?

Ms Turia said she'd recently returned from Australia where politicians there are strongly promoting the adoption of Aboriginal children, resulting in more being removed from their homes.

Frankly I hope we get to that option in this country. Adoption is no cure-all and brings with it a new set of possible problems. But it's still a better idea than leaving a child in a situation of serious risk, or moving them around from placement to placement.

"All the experts here say that by addressing poverty, we'd remove a huge stressor on families that is connected to increased rates of child maltreatment and neglect."

Always back to the collective, political, failed solution.

New political party

Under Public Notices in today's DomPost the Electoral Commission advised the application  for approval of the logo representing a new political party called THRIVE.

I've just googled them. A techno-based party which, as yet, stands for nothing.

John Minto on child abuse

John Minto says that Labour needs "a kick up the backside" for not pushing the message that poverty is the "key factor" behind child abuse.

He says there are NEVER any excuses for child abuse but there are REASONS behind it.

Unfortunately reasons becomes excuses very easily.

Can I take you back to just a couple of things that people like John Minto ignore.

Child abuse rates are not high amongst all groups with high poverty rates. In fact they are lower amongst poor Asians.

Household incomes of Maori and Pacific families are growing faster than the median, yet the rate of Maori child abuse is not declining.

And there's another thing that leftists frequently claim. That abuse happens right across society. It isn't just the poor. That's another inconsistency then.

But Minto is angry with Labour for understanding the issue better than he does. He writes:

But the most pathetic aspect of the announcement was the reaction of the Labour Party.

Fresh from the 1980s Labour’s Social Development spokesperson Annette King never mentioned poverty or the causes of child abuse. Here’s how she was report by Fairfax:

'Labour’s acting Social Development spokesperson Annette King said all New Zealanders wanted to see child abuse stopped and National’s proposals provided the opportunity to look at the best ways to do that. “Let’s look at the evidence, hear the experts who work in the field, and let the public have their say. We need to hear the evidence and be assured the proposals will work.”

A number of the proposals were “worthwhile”, including legislating to make Government departments accountable for protecting children as well as screening and vetting processes for Government employees working with children.'

Whether or not I agree with Annette it was refreshing to hear a Labour spokesperson not opposing for the sake of it. If Jacinda Ardern had been available she'd have taken Minto's line no doubt. (And where is she by the way? Sidelined on this issue or out of the country?)

Child abuse - casting the net too wide?

When it comes to child abuse substantiations there is no publicly available information about the relationship between the abuser and abused. CYF must have it but don't release it.

I have assumed, possibly wrongly, that most abuse is perpetrated by the caregiver or other family member/friend.

The extent to which 'wider circle' people are involved in the abuse of the child is also unknown. Yet reforms announced today would suggest the bigger circle is a significant problem:

Screening and Vetting
We will introduce minimum standards for screening and vetting of every government worker in the children’s workforce.

This covers the core workforce, e.g. paediatricians, teachers, Child, Youth and Family social workers and children’s counsellors as well as the wider children’s workforce e.g. non-teaching staff, library reading group leaders and Work and Income case managers. All up, it’s more than 370,000 people.

Minimum standards for screening and vetting will identify potential abusers. It will include specific interview techniques, thorough reference and Police record checks as well as the history and behaviour of every one of those individuals. It’ll also mean checking with former employers and wider community members about any concerns relating to children.

This will be mandatory for all government agencies and any government-funded organisations working with children and voluntary for wider community organisations. Agencies will be required to do a thorough risk assessment with periodic reassessments every three years.

This kind of scrutiny is not only time-consuming and expensive, it gets people's backs up. They feel as though they are working in an environment that suspects first, and trusts second. I've undergone police checks in order to volunteer with families. While I didn't particularly object, the ensuing time delay in my getting started (months) could have seen me lose interest or pursue another activity.

 Children’s Workforce Restrictions
In conjunction with the changes outlined to screening and vetting we will introduce restrictions on people who have serious convictions, such as murder, manslaughter, sexual violation, assault on a child and sexual conduct with young people, stopping them entering the children’s workforce. There will be serious consequences if organisations fail to comply with these restrictions.

Not sure manslaughter should be on the list but anyway.... what is "the children's workforce"? Are private tutors, music teachers, gym coaches, nannies, babysitters, hairdressers, casual creche staff, school bus drivers, taxi drivers etc etc part of the "children's workforce"? They are often self-employed.

The other measure that looks unimpressive is:

Child Harm Prevention Orders
There are cases where children have been abused because a dangerous individual got close enough to do so, sometimes literally by moving into their home.

A High Court or District Court will be able to place these new civil orders on adults with a history of serious convictions who pose a high risk of abusing children. This could also include cases where it’s believed the person was responsible for the serious abuse or death of a child on the balance of probabilities. These orders can restrict people from living with children and going to places where children often are – like parks, and working or associating with children.

Like Protection Orders, these may be toothless when it comes to desperate people. Or colluding people. A woman can have a protection order taken against an abusive partner and then conveniently ignore it when the two have kissed and made up...until the next incident. I knew of a couple where the male had an order out against him so he rented a property three doors up. That way he could retain proximity to his son and partner (with her consent) without breaking the law.


BUT there's some good stuff in here too. Breaking down the prior privacy barriers between the main government departments and increasing accountability in the process (stopping buck-passing) is good. Giving the Family Court powers to increase the guardianship rights of adoptive parents is good.

And action rather than lip-service is good.

More gender inequalities

Statistics NZ has changed the tables that accompany the Household Labour Force .Survey. They've excluded the two that show 'employed' or 'none employed' by household type, (though they will be available after September at another location) and introduced replacement tables that show labour force status by earner, employer, self-employed or unpaid relative assistant. The tables are separated into gender.

This shows some interesting things.

Of employers, 29 percent are female.

Of the unpaid relatives assisting,  64 percent are female.

Of the self-employed, 34 percent are female.

Oh dear. More inequalities.

Care of elderly and the welfare state

The author of The Welfare State We're In is writing a new book. His latest post coincides with my earlier topic this week prompted by discussions on Radio Live about elder care:

What do you do about granny?

I have just finished the first draft of the chapter on care for the elderly for my new book. So here is a quiz question: what is the range -  among different European countries – of the percentage of women aged over 65 and without a partner/husband who are living with one of their adult children? When I have asked people this question, they have mostly been totally wrong about both ends of the range. The statistics are indeed extraordinary. Please have a guess. The answer is revealed later on.

The chapter was really difficult to write. First,  the subject is depressing. It is grim to come across figures showing how many people in residential care are clinically depressed and wish they were dead. It is sad to read of the loneliness. Second, it is tough or impossible to come up with a simple answer to fit all situations. There is so much variety in the condition and preferences of people over 65. But it does seem to me that many countries have been too eager to give up the family as a unit which can provide comfort and care to elderly parents. It is strange – but I think is true – that supposedly backward Greece, Portugal, Spain (and Italy) may have been right while  ‘advanced’ Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden (and the EU which has encouraged institutional care) may have been wrong.

The answer: the range of percentages is from 3% in Denmark to 61% in Portugal (research report dated 2000). Quite an astonishing range, I think. It shows how the behaviour of people is strongly influenced by their welfare states. We should not assume that the cultures of these countries were always different with regard to the elderly. There is reason to believe that all cultures, including the Scandinavian,  used to look after their elderly parents. Now I am moving on to crime and civil behaviour. I would be grateful for any input or experience from any country about how these things are now or how they have changed in the past 30, 40 or more years.

For example: if you go to public buildings like a post office or hospital in your country, is there a sign warning you not to abuse the staff? But I would be delighted to hear about any other perceptions you may have about crime or behaviour or, indeed, how the concepts of virtue or duty are doing in your country.

And this country?

New Zealand "has previously reported high rates of residential aged care relative to other OECD countries."

(Actually it won't be about "Granny". It'll be about Mum or Dad. I don't know why it's so fraught. But I've yet to meet the harsh realities some face.)

Corporate welfare

I accept the government's tax subsidy to Rio Tinto is corporate welfare.

Corporate welfare is bad because it's privilege for some.

The only way to reduce corporate welfare is to reduce the size of government.

One effect of the subsidy is keeping Meridian Energy economically sound.

Selling off Meridian is just a small step towards downsizing government.

So I'm supporting this dose of corporate welfare as a means to a more important end....

I think....

I'm open to changing my mind.

Tamihere First?

New Zealand's small population makes politics particularly fertile ground for power-hungry egos. Combined with the incestuousness of MMP,  implications for the entire country may ride on past rejections,  and subsequent development of further destructive co-dependent relationships. That's kind of fitting. The story of many personal lives.

I don't know when the jungle drum started beating but its rhythm picked up tempo very quickly. Radio Live host, Sean Plunket must have kicked off the public conversation about JT (also Radio Live host) joining forces with Winston First this morning. Matthew Hooton continues in the NBR (based on the time and day attributed).

This coupling would be hugely significant. The votes they'd pull are NZ male - 'good blokes' -  who feel disenfranchised by feminism; homophobes; xenophobes; nationalists;  elder entitilitis addicts; women who swoon over handsome Maori men; AND plenty of good folk to boot.

Ex-politicians who want to return make me distrustful. In the current climate, the money isn't bad. Importantly, it's steady. Tamihere can argue his altruistic leanings, his vocation to improve the lives of Maori, but his return to parliament isn't necessary to further that cause.

Under National, a couple of really important developments should have progressed Tamihere's urban Maori authority endeavours - whanau ora and charter schools. These initiatives deliver power into Maori hands. Nothing Paula Bennett knows or says is any different to what Tamihere was saying as a Labour MP. However, she did cut off some Waipareira funding(? Not sure what the court resolution was in that battle.)

If the rumour that Tamihere is talking to Winston has substance, what is it that Tamihere wants that NZ First can give him?

Or is this whole episode about Radio Live making the news instead of reporting it?

The care of aged Maori

There are only 34,200 Maori aged 65 and older.

65+  34,200
75+  11,000
80+  5,000

In the total population  616,660 people are aged 65 plus.  160,000 are 80 plus.

So only 3 percent of 80 year-olds and older are Maori.

I was prompted to look up these figures - I knew they were low - on the back of a conversation Willie and JT had yesterday about Maori and care of the elderly. They were talking about how, in the past, their elderly were always cared for by the whanau whereas Pakeha put their old in rest homes (though this was changing).

A caller said she had seen research showing that by the 1980s this was no longer true. That rates of 'institutionalisation' were actually the same. In particular, elderly Maori were often committed to psychiatric units. I came across the following table in my hard copy of the 1994 NZ Yearbook. It shows high Maori rates of first admission in the younger population but not the 60+. These stats relate to first admissions though.

Table 7.21. RATES OF FIRST ADMISSION TO PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS*

Year	Ages							Total all ages
	0-9	10-19	20-29	30-39	40-49	50-59	60 and over
*Per 100 000 mean population. Year ended 31 December. Source: Health Information Service
1987—
Maori	15	170	393	253	117	103	51	180
Non-Maori	13	111	218	149	127	98	149	127
1988—
Maori	5	210	488	275	170	131	90	218
Non-Maori	10	108	222	159	127	103	151	129
1989—
Maori	12	179	444	260	153	91	92	197
Non-Maori	11	95	225	157	129	95	133	124
1990—
Maori	12	165	496	338	292	156	37	230
Non-Maori	7	88	240	213	165	140	136	142
1991—
Maori	4	168	470	318	197	91	93	208
Non-Maori	7	80	225	174	122	98	125	121

I've been trying to find historical data relating to residential care populations but drew a blank.

Relating to current numbers the Human Rights Commission produced this report:

 "During visits to aged care facilities the Commission was struck by the absence of Māori as residents. Conversations with providers suggest that residential care residents are predominantly female and Pakeha, although providers have noted increasing diversity in recent years. Data from the OPAL study (2008) based on Auckland figures, show that two percent of rest home residents were Māori, compared to 92.4 percent European and 4.5 percent Pacific Island. Of those in hospital level facilities, 2.6 percent were Māori, 89.1 percent European and 6.4 percent Pacific."

Those numbers are particularly low for Auckland and doubly interesting in light of the Pacific numbers.

So it would appear elderly Maori are disproportionately cared for in their own homes or their adult children's homes. That's a good disproportionality in my view.

More inconvenient truths CPAG overlook

Last week the Child Poverty Action Group released a report into the link between substantiated child abuse and socio-economic deprivation, ethnicity, benefit income and the youth population.

I've blogged about the shortcoming in their methodology to conclude there is "no correlation between benefit receipt and child maltreatment."

So let's move onto their next finding, p.2:

"...there is an association between ethnicity and child maltreatment, however given the strong association between ethnicity and socio-economic disadvantage in New Zealand this finding needs to be treated with caution."

On p.13 the following "discussion" appears:

Disproportionately high rates of child abuse among Māori need to be treated with caution: the ethnicity given is that of the child; New Zealand data shows a strong link between socio economic deprivation and ethnicity (Perry, 2009, 2012). Data from Perry (2012, p. 76) shows that between 2009 and 2001 the median income of Māori families fell 1.1% ($26,300 to $26,000), the median income of Pacific households fell an astonishing 5.3% ($28,300 to $26,800) while that of Europeans – starting from a much higher base – fell 0.8% ($35,500 to $35,200).

Here's the relevant table (note their typo - 2001 should be 2011):

The updated 2013 report shows that between 2011 and 2012 Maori income increased to $30,000 and Pacific income increased to $29,800 (Perry, 2013, p.80).

That in itself is inconvenient. Perry notes:

From a longer-term perspective, all groups showed a strong rise from the low point in the mid 1990s through to 2010.  In real terms, overall median household income rose 47% from 1994 to 2010: for Maori, the rise was even stronger at 68%, and for Pacific, 77%. 

But the issue I really want to focus on is this.

CPAG got ethnicity breakdowns on the substantiated findings of abuse across CYF site offices.

They provide a comparison in their appendix:

Note the bottom line which shows that, on average, substantiated abuse findings are exactly the same for Pacific when compared to the NZ European baseline.

CPAG describes this table thus (p.12):

Raw data for all substantiations (not distinct cases) shows nationally Maori children are more than twice as likely to suffer abuse as Europeans (abuse rates for each ethnic group by site office and country overall are listed in Table 7).

So if "a strong link between socio economic deprivation and ethnicity" is the reason Maori children are over-represented in abuse statistics, why isn't it operating amongst Pacific and other ethnicities?

This is a fly in the ointment for CPAG. For them poverty has to be associated with  child abuse because it provides support for their main campaign which is to increase benefits.

The report ends with this:

Rates of child abuse in a society are not pre-determined, nor do they remain static. New Zealanders’ rates of child abuse have increased over time: they can change for the better if we so choose. Reducing the risks associated with poverty would be a good place to start.

So "rates of child abuse have increased over time" yet Maori households, where a disproportionate amount of the abuse occurs, have incomes rising faster than the median.

Their position is implausible.

Smoking and sex

My subscription to e-mail notifications of new studies coming out of the Christchurch Health and Development Study delivered this finding today:

 Findings across 3 studies using a complement of genetically sensitive research designs suggest that smoking during pregnancy is a prenatal risk factor for offspring conduct problems when controlling for specific perinatal and postnatal confounding factors.

The problem is, according to the new version of the Christchurch study, Growing up in New Zealand, tracking  babies born in the late 2000s:

* More than one in 10 mothers continued to smoke through their pregnancies (with an over-representation of those identifying as Maori and living in the most deprived areas.)

At least teenagers are smoking less according to the Auckland University  Youth Health and Wellbeing survey released last week.

Which reminds me, I've been blogging for a while about the falling teenage birthrate (since 2007) and speculating on reasons why. One could simply be that teenagers are having less sex.

Well it seems that may well be the answer according to the same survey.

In 2001 31.3 percent had "ever had sex" down to 24.4 percent in 2012.

Chart of the day

Here's one OECD chart New Zealand is topping, Family Violence

 

Chart SF3.4.A Prevalence of partner physical or sexual assault, women and men, around 2005.

CPAG research inconclusive at best

New research from CPAG claims there is "no evidence of an association between benefit receipt and distinct substantiated rates of child abuse."  And later under Conclusion, "...benefit income does not appear to be related to rates of child abuse."

How did they arrive at this?

Here's a cut and paste of the entire relevant text and scan of their scatterplot:


3.5 Benefit uptake

Benefit data is held by the Ministry of Social Development. We have assumed WINZ offices cover broadly the same areas as CYF site offices as MSD appears to know what percent of the population is on a benefit (see for example Collins, 2013) so would use the same or similar population estimates they use for CYF purposes. Here, data for the four main income-tested benefits has been combined since not all the jobless go on an unemployment benefit nor is it only DPB recipients who care for children (similarly, not all DPB recipients care for children, although most do). Benefit figures are from June 2012 so are for a point in time only: the numbers can easily change if the dynamics of people moving on and off benefits changes. The percentage of beneficiaries in the population was plotted against the rate of substantiated distinct abuse cases in each site office. If there was a relationship we
would expect to see rates of substantiated abuse rise as the proportion of working-age beneficiaries rose. This relationship is statistically insignificant, with the R 2  value being 0.39. The values for each site office are in the Appendix at Table 6. 

Figure 5: Scatterplot showing rate of distinct substantiated cases of child abuse and proportion of income-tested beneficiaries in population for CYF site offices. R 2  = 0.39

 The site offices with rates above 2.5 include Taupo (2.76 but a below-average proportion of income-tested beneficiaries in the population); Clendon (2.96 and a slightly higher than average proportion of income-tested beneficiaries in the population); and Whakatane (3.5 and an above average 10.1% of the population being on an income-tested benefit) and Papakura (4.0 with the 10% of the population estimated to be on an income-tested benefit being slightly less than Whakatane). There are 8 site offices with a higher proportion of the population receiving an income-tested benefit that have below average rates of substantiated child abuse.

The weak relationship between benefit receipt and child abuse may be no more than a reflection of the impact of the low incomes of benefit recipients (Perry, 2007). The data here shows no evidence of an association between benefit receipt and distinct substantiated rates of child abuse.

I have one major problem with this chart. It uses benefit dependency rates across all benefits. Most people on a working age benefit are not caring for children (58% 2012). Most children dependent on a benefit rely on the DPB (78% 2012). What would the chart look like if the relevant population was plotted?

Remember that earlier Auckland University research found,

 "There are 10,300 children maltreated by age 5 and seen on a benefit by age 5, comprising 86% of all children with maltreatment findings by that age – suggesting that the majority of children  with maltreatment findings are on the benefit relatively early in their lives since we only lose 3% when we ignore children who arrive on the benefit after age 2."

This strongly suggests that most would be on the DPB. Consider this graph from the Children's Social Health Monitor:




Anyway CPAG took exception to the Auckland University in their first report saying,

"It suggests child maltreatment is a function of membership of particular social groups, something for which the evidence is very weak."

They footnote this claim with the following, "See Child Poverty Action Group technical paper (forthcoming)."

And here it is.

Whose research is more robust? The University of Auckland or the Child Poverty Action Group's?

CPAG report into child abuse disappoints

CPAG has been heralding the release of a new report into child abuse which analyses CYF data. It hasn't gone on-line yet but Stuff has a pre-report. There's nothing of great interest so far and their analysis about the types of abuse and why reports have risen are old hat.

Broken down into types of child abuse over the same time period, sexual abuse accounted for the smallest proportion, at 6.7% of cases.
Emotional abuse was the most common form, at 54.6% on average.
Sexual abuse and neglect was relatively constant during the period, but the number of emotional and physical abuse cases had risen.
CPAG said this could reflect an increase in the number of police and family violence referrals, or the impact of the Ministry of Social Development’s 'It’s not OK' campaign.

Anyone who takes an interest in this area is well acquainted with these 'findings'.

Update

Actually I have found something of interest but CPAG missed it.

According to their report, the following are the areas with the highest rates of child abuse. They don't surprise. None is south of Taupo:

TOP TEN HIGHEST RATES OF CHILD ABUSE
Papakura
Whakatane
Clendon
Taupo
Otahuhu
Manurewa
Rotorua
Westgate
Whangarei
Far North

Last week I blogged about children taken into state care and did express surprise that the numbers were so high in the Southern region.

Children in out of home placements, by region

Region	F2008	F2009	F2010	F2011	F2012	F2013 as at 31 Mar 2013
Northern Region	1,367	1,305	1,234	1,173	1,227	1,195
Midlands Region	816	869	876	744	749	792
Central Region	1,060	1,027	958	801	846	835
Southern Region	1,277	1,204	1,166	1,166	1,062	1,014
Adoptions / Others	2	3	4	1
National Total	4,522	4,408	4,238	3,885	3,884	3,836

Very broadly speaking, it looks like the highest rates of child abuse are in the north, but the highest rate of child removal into state care is in the south. Fascinating.

Perhaps the two things are connected. Where children are removed from risk, abuse rates are lower?

Welfare reform - the 1990s versus today

A column published in the NZCPD newsletter today speculates about the lack of public protest against National's current welfare reforms:

In the early 1990s the National government introduced welfare reforms that were met with enormous resistance and provoked a good deal of public sympathy for the plight of beneficiaries.  The reforms featured benefit cuts which reduced most incomes by around 10 percent, with some losing as much as 25 percent. These cuts affected hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries and their children directly, and others, like retailers and landlords, indirectly. While the government needed to both save money and increase the gap between benefit incomes and wages to incentivise greater productivity, unemployment was above ten percent.

More.

Extending the IWTC is not a cure for child poverty

In the interests of children the In Work Tax Credit should be retained as a work incentive. Even Labour believed that working parents offered the best way out of poverty for children, and that extends beyond just the monetary rewards of working. That's why they designed a tax credit system that made working pay more.

Ever since, the CPAG has tried to overturn it, arguing discrimination against children of beneficiaries.

Today the NZ Herald has revealed that 51 percent of people participating in an on-line poll agree with CPAG. At 750 it's not a large sample but nevertheless it is disappointing that so many people don't think through the issue.

New Zealand's 'child poverty' problem is largely a result of welfare dependency. More welfare won't fix it.

What has John Ansell got up his sleeve?

I don't know. But he's a clever, quirky man and I'll be watching tomorrow at 7.20am TV One.