US - more welfare spending, more poverty

The Manhattan Institute has just released a paper detailing US welfare spending and a making a further case for reform. I've done no more than scan through it but here's a telling couple of graphs and commentary. SNAP is the old food stamps program now re-named Supplemental Nutrion Assistance Program.(It is difficult to make any meaningful comparisons to NZ as Medicaid is included whereas unemployment insurance and social security are not considered 'welfare'.)

National and benefit numbers - back to where they started from

The Minister for Social Development, now Anne Tolley, has just announced latest benefit numbers saying they show "strong decline". Steady might be a more accurate adjective.




11.2 percent - or one in nine - of the working age population has no means to independently support themselves. Back to where we started from pre-recession, or when National took office. Here are the percentages in the ten years prior to 2008.

Currently trending in the right direction but with a long way to go.

"Kids of Single Parents More Likely to Witness Domestic Violence"

From the Institute for Families Studies, a thoughtful analysis of why children of divorce/separated, or never-married parents are exposed to much higher rates of domestic violence. Intuitively you would expect these results for separated parents, but fewer people would expect it for never-married mothers (which harks back to my earlier post this week about child abuse and non-biological fathers. Partner abuse often translates into child abuse, whether intentionally or accidentally.)

Many studies have found that young people raised in single-parent families show more achievement and behavior problems than those who grow up with both their biological parents. Family sociologists often attribute these developmental problems to the meager financial resources that single parents command, and the less adequate supervision they can exercise over their offspring. But research has also shown that childhood disturbances are linked to conflict between parents, especially when the conflict is intense or prolonged. My analysis of recent national survey data here shows that children of divorced and never-married parents are far more likely to have been exposed to domestic violence than children in married two-parent families.

Source: Zill, N. (2014). Analysis of public use microdata file from 2011-12 National Survey of Children’s Health, National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

(Hat-tip Bob McCoskrie)

Bleeding heart on steroids

Jeepers. Does this guy lay it on thick.

How can any society regard itself as moral when it allows a quarter or more of its children, with their families, to live in poverty, in cold, damp and overcrowded houses, with inadequate food, and suffering from illnesses such as asthma, rheumatic fever or TB?
Or turns a blind eye to children ashamed to go to school in worn-out clothing, without lunch or money for a class trip, or mothers forced to clean buildings in the middle of the night on rock-bottom wages?
How can we allow kids to have the best years of their lives ruined by the stain of poverty and the shame of social exclusion, with parents denied the natural joy and pride of being able to adequately provide for and enjoy some of the simple pleasures like a day at the beach?

Apparently the evils of indiviualism are to blame for this sorry state of affairs.

I was getting a bit worked up until I read some of the comments.

Here's my favourite from someone called Peter Archer:

The irony is that the poverty exists solely because of government welfare. As soon as welfare starting flowing from the trough, it took away the incentive to better one's self.

The more welfare there is, the more poverty there will be in the following generation.

But there are many more comments rejecting the ex-bishop's views.

Ironically Randerson's thesis is partially correct. It is individualism preventing a major swing his way. It's a recognition, not of individual rights, but individual responsibilities.

People's attitudes to welfare spending have changed. It hasn't delivered the socialist  utopia promised. If anything this column reinforces the failure of government mandated redistribution.

Increasing child abuse admissions to Starship

The NZ Herald reports on increased number of admissions to Starship for physical abuse.

Dr Kelly said it was hard to say why the number presenting at the Starship hospital with injuries consistent with abuse was increasing. "What is clear is that despite all the societal angst and all the expressed interest in intervention and prevention, the incidence is certainly not going down," he said.....
Dr Kelly said the perpetrator of the abuse was "very variable".
"Like most centres, our anecdotal experience is that male offenders are more common than female offenders, and non-biologically related males - 'stepfathers' - are disproportionately represented," he said.

So why are so many babies exposed to non-biologically related males?

Can it be because so many births are to unmarried or non-partnered females?

And might that be because we pay them an income on par with the minimum wage to have babies?

And might it also follow that instead of a benefit reducing a single mother's vulnerability to violence, it actually increases it?

Kelly goes on to blame family violence (which is actually an outcome - not a cause), social inequality and alcohol.

I prefer Walter William's belief that the welfare state is responsible for the destruction of society's social bonds.

After all , 

Of all children having a finding of maltreatment by age 5, 83 % are seen on a benefit before age 2, translating into a very high “capture” rate.