Latest OECD data on pension qualification and affordability

Summarised by the US Social Security department:

"The report presents a number of aging-related statistics for the OECD member countries, which include the following:

In 32 of the 34 OECD member countries, the fertility rate is below the replacement level.

Average life expectancy at age 65 in the 2010–2015 period is 21.8 additional years for women and 17.4 additional years for men and is expected to reach 25.8 years and 21.9 years, respectively, in the 2060–2065 period.

The average number of expected years in retirement has increased from 11 for men and 15 for women in 1970 to 18 and 22, respectively, in 2014.

The old-age dependency ratio (the population aged 65 or older divided by the population aged 20–64) is projected to nearly double from the current 28 older persons for every 100 working-age persons to 35 older persons by 2025 and to 55 older persons by 2075.

The share of older workers aged 55–64 has risen from 48 percent in 2004 to 56 percent in 2014.
The average effective age for leaving the labor market is 64.4 for men and 63.1 for women.

To counter these trends and the financial strain they put on public pension systems, the report notes that many countries have raised the statutory retirement age and introduced measures that discourage early retirement. By 2054, according to current legislation, 15 of the 34 OECD member countries will have retirement ages older than 65 (compared with 8 member countries in 2015)."

I wonder if New Zealand will be one by 2054?

Martin van Beynen nails it with a MUST-READ

Some years ago Martin van Beynen took off on a tour of New Zealand to find poverty. He didn't stand in a university lecture theatre or go to some church in a wealthy suburb to preach statistics.

What he did do was produce a series of articles and photographs from the most run-down and often dysfunctional environments. He talked to the people who live in them who it must be said were often rather cheerful and stoic. Or sometimes angry and disaffected. But he took us to the places we know exist yet will probably never see for ourselves.

Today he has delivered again with a brilliant expose of the meaninglessness of child poverty reports.
Absolute must-read. Reproduced in full here so I can be assured of access to it in the future:

OPINION:  If you lived next door to children living in severe poverty, you would probably do something to help out.
You might, for instance, slip the family a few hundred bucks around Christmas, have them over for dinner occasionally or pay the odd household bill for them.
But living cheek by jowl with the poor doesn't happen to middle NZ very much any more.
The gap has widened and the poor congregate in their enclaves and middle NZ goes some place else.
Street life doesn't bring the classes together.
But we hear about poverty quite a bit because, as an advanced society, we have measures and statistics to monitor how we are treating the most vulnerable.
We have reports like the Child Poverty Monitor which was released this week.
It said 305,000 dependent New Zealanders aged 0-17 were living in income poverty. Using another measure, it reported 220,500 of the same age group were living in "severe poverty".
It generated the usual response of Government bashing, capitalist blaming and gnashing of teeth. John Key scandalised Labour's children's spokeswoman Jacinda Ardern by linking poverty to drug use.
Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said the Government's refusal to end child poverty was putting children's lives at risk.
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And then, as is becoming usual, nothing.
Shouldn't we be shocked and appalled? Why aren't we doing something? What is wrong with us?
The answers are many and various. As a political or even social advocacy tool reports like the Child Poverty Monitor are pretty hopeless.
They cast the net too wide so truly serious poverty is trivialised. They suggest the answers all relate to handing out more money, that easy fix solutions exist. They tell us what we already know. Maori and Polynesian children are over-represented. Really?
They imply children are somehow divorced from their family or community environment.
In addition the numbers don't sound quite right.
Let's take a city in NZ which has a population of say 400,000. About 100,000 will be under 18. Of those, about 29,000, according to the report, are living in "income poverty" and about 21,000 will be in "severe poverty".
That's a lot of kindergartens, primary schools and high schools in a city like Christchurch or Wellington.
And what is income or severe poverty anyway?
Poverty is an emotive term, at least for my generation (I am a youthful 57).
It brings to mind an income on which it is impossible to afford the basic necessities of life. It conjures up images of ragged children, dust bowls, rundown houses, beaten down workers and bleak streets. But being poor is different from living in poverty.
In modern sociological terms poverty has become to mean the inability to participate fully in society or to reach one's full potential.
And don't forget we are not just talking about poverty. It is child poverty.
A child is a small innocent person in my book. When you include 16 and 17 year-olds, you bring young adults into the mix. They are still children, of course, but their childhoods have gone.
We all know why these reports use the word child. A child is blameless and  innocent. This gets around the problem of the undeserving poor. These  child poverty victims have, by a cruel quirk of fate, ended up being born in the wrong families.
Child poverty is more worthy of a sympathetic ear than old people poverty or single parent poverty. It is innocent poverty.
Then we have those fascinating definitions. Income poverty is defined as 60 per cent of the median income after housing costs are taken into account. Severe poverty is 50 per cent of the median income.
Median income is the point at which half the people receive more and half receive less than the stated amount.
The child monitor report does not say what the median NZ income is but a bit of detective work shows the median NZ income is $621 a week.
It's more complicated however. The median income from wages and salaries is $882 a week ($45,864 pa).
Then we have income from "Government transfers" which is income provided by the state for things like benefits, Working for Families, ACC payments and NZ Superannuation.
The median weekly transfer is $315 a week.
Another reason to be a little wary of the Child Monitor report is that it reports a big change in income poverty from 2013 ( 24 per cent of dependent 0-17 year olds) to 2014 (29 per cent).
What could have happened in just 12 months to plunge another 45,000 children and young adults into income poverty?
We need to be reminded about children living in true hardship. But not everything that reminds us is worthwhile.
Reports like the Child Poverty Monitor are not working.
Everyone knows a low income is only one of a host of factors which make people poor and increasing benefits or allowances will make little difference to the poverty which stems from human frailties, failures or vices.
We need robust measures to give us an accurate picture of who needs help but the figures are starting to seem meaningless.
We have come to doubt them. They don't seem to reflect reality. They lump the poor into one amorphous caste. They make no allowance for the black market economy or the ability to harvest free food.
A lot is already being done to help families in hardship and a lot more needs to be done but these reports don't help at all.

Who will sing for the male victims?

From the NZ Herald:

Kiwi singer Tina Cross has teamed up with a police choir for a powerful message against domestic violence.
Joining forces with the Counties Manukau District Commander's Police Choir and teenagers from Otahuhu Blue Light Choir, Cross re-recorded her 2014 song Walk Away as a message of support for women in abusive relationships.

According to TV3 last night

So far this year, 33 people have died from family violence - 16 children, 10 women and 7 men.

And recently from the DomPost:

A  Stuff data investigation has found at least 204 children, aged 0-14, have died as a result of neglect, abuse, or maltreatment in New Zealand since 1992.
 Most commonly, they died at the hands of men. Almost three quarters of the killers were family members.
The killers were almost equally likely to be mothers or fathers, accounting for 31 per cent and 29 per cent of cases respectively, where the victim's relationship with the killer was known. 

So who will sing for the male victims of  domestic abuse?

And who will sing for the children killed by their mothers?

Personally, I view singing for a cause as a wankfest.

But it does continue to highlight a biased and unjust refusal to acknowledge the active and aggressive part women can and do play in family violence.

Genuine about reducing child poverty? Here's an original idea

So the misdiagnosers had their day in the sun as the media went potty with the headline buster, Third of children in poverty - report (DomPost front page).

The  implicit answer is more state-mandated wealth transfer.

That won't work though, because that is the policy that creates poverty; not the policy that reduces it.

So it is something of a relief, on the same day, to read a different idea.

Problem 1: Children who lose contact with their fathers do worse in life.
Problem 2: Single mothers who want to work often struggle with the cost of childcare.
Problem 3: Many non-resident fathers are without meaningful work.
All three of these problems are fairly well established in the research literature. Each also motivates a battery of policy responses, with varying degrees of efficacy. In a recent report on poverty and opportunity from a working group convened by Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute, non-resident fathers received some special attention....So, let’s see…Lots of non-resident fathers are not gainfully employed; single mothers are struggling with childcare cost; and children, especially boys, are suffering from the distance or absence of their father. Here’s an idea: have the fathers look after their children, allowing mothers to get into and stay in work. The savings for the mother would far outweigh child support payments, which could be suspended when the father is providing childcare. What if, rather than squeezing these men for every last nickel, we were to ask them to do childcare instead?

With single mothers increasingly participating in the workforce, this idea has merit - social and economic.

Ironically, it suggests a partial reverse of times gone by, when fathers dominated the workplace and mothers almost always provided the childcare. Like then, two parents should be able to manage their families financial and childcare requirements without welfare - separated or not.

Child poverty - it IS a choice

The Children's Commissioner is leading a social media campaign to battle child poverty.

"Child poverty - it's not choice." That's the message that outgoing Children's Commissioner Dr Russell Wills wants to spread through social media in a challenge to Government policy.

It's not the choice of the children living in low income households.

But the majority of them end up there through the choices made by their parents.

When one in five children every year is being born directly onto a benefit or into precarious financial circumstances that will see them dependent on a benefit within their first year...

...somewhere along the line choices are made. They are the sole responsibility of the parent. Not you, not me and not the rest of NZ.

Yes, the government, as our representatives, makes choices about how the consequences of those choices are dealt with but the horse has bolted by then.

The Children's Commissioner does his charges no favours by refusing to acknowledge the facts behind child poverty. An illness cannot be cured if it is misdiagnosed and wrongly treated.

But it's an interesting choice of message, "Child poverty - it's not choice".

Clearly the public perception the anti-poverty advocates have identified and want to stamp out is the reverse.

New Zealanders are generous with their time and money

This is charted for the benefit of a discussion thread elsewhere.

69% helped a stranger

62% donated money

44% volunteered time

That was 2014.

Over a five year period NZ ranked 3rd.

Source

Correlation between welfare and poor outcomes

Treasury released these graphs yesterday.

What stands out from the above  is that of those considered at 'extreme risk' of poor outcomes 62% are Maori while only 7% are Pasifika. This highlights yet again the ill-advised practice of referring to 'troubled youth' as Polynesians. The Pacific culture has protective factors at work that aren't always present for Maori.

The next stand-out feature (unsurprising) is the very high mental health service use by those at extreme risk.

But also look at the correlation between being on a benefit for 5 or more years (cumulatively between ages 25-34) and being at extreme or high risk of poor outcomes.

Of the total 15-24 population, 25,713 will be on a benefit 5 or more years but not at risk of poor outcomes.  However, 26,698 - a small majority - are at high or extreme risk of poor outcomes.

And their childhoods?

Why anyone wants to resist reforming welfare is beyond me.

A Corrections history substantially increases benefit dependency

Interesting fact:

Of all people with some form of Corrections history post-1960 that are still under the age of 65 (390,581 people), 28% (or 108,462 people) were receiving a main benefit at 30 June 2013. This compares with approximately 11% of the NZ working-age population as a whole.

Actually, I find this level of benefit dependency surprisingly low.

What it does show is people with criminal convictions have a good chance of becoming self-sustaining.  I expect though that if the data was further analysed, those who serve prison-time (as opposed to community sentences) would have a higher incidence of benefit receipt.

It looks like MSD will do further work in this area, so my expectation will be confirmed in time.

Good for David Seymour

Turning down significant ministerial roles to focus on what is really important - his voluntary euthanasia bill and his party - impresses me. In fact I don't think Seymour has put a foot wrong yet. Certainly not your typical snout- in- the- trough type.

NBR keeps Xero on the hook

The world of business is foreign to me. When I first read about Xero I had no idea what kind of animal it was and had to ask Google.

Long time supporter of Dave Henderson, Rodney Hide (with friends like that you can afford enemies) has been chronicling his own and Henderson's wife's investigation by the state by stint of running businesses and being related by friendship or marriage to Mr Henderson. It's appalling.

The managing director of Xero is not covering himself in glory. First Xero denied divulging Henderson's wife's business data to the Official Assignee, than admitted they had been directed not to inform the owner of the information.

Even those who cleave to the axiom nothing to hide, nothing to fear should be repulsed and angered by this ability of the state to commandeer private information.

(Left click to enlarge)

Quote of the Day

The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.

– Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Religion [1776]

Hat-tip FFF

Don't tell me what to do about the flag

Since childhood I've resented being told what I think or should think. If the opinion piece in today's NZ Herald is aimed at changing minds (and changing the flag)  it's a great big fail for me. It touched that resentful nerve:

Admit it, the ballot paper is still sitting on the sideboard while you wonder what to do. 

No it isn't. It's been binned.

 One or two of those designs are clearly better than the others.

Really? Isn't that a matter of subjective taste? Yet the writer (arrogantly) thinks his or her selection is superior.

 ... to ignore the ballot paper increases the risk of ending up with a flag we really dislike.

How exactly?

 When the Commonwealth leaders gathered at the weekend, very few flags outside their conference venue featured the Union Jack. It is only a matter of time before we remove it from ours. We might not be excited by the alternatives but we need one.

Or perhaps we'll be the last with it on the flag. Perhaps Australia should change theirs. Perhaps changing their flag should be made a forcible outcome for the loser of the next Rugby World Cup. That's only as silly as the current process has been.

 Please vote.

I will. In the next stage.

Graph of the day

Many countries which fared far worse during the GFC would envy that household income line.

(Looking at the tables, the gap in income to housing costs ratios is growing between Auckland and the rest of the country, and largely driving up the steep rise in the bottom line. The difference in ratio in 2007, between Auckland and the rest of the North Island was only 1.4 points. Now it is 4.1 points -though the numbers are somewhat volatile.)

Source Household Economic Survey.

Using police as arbiters of family disputes

Here's a familiar statement from today's NZ Herald:

Statistics show New Zealand has the highest rate of intimate partner violence in the OECD and on average police respond to a family violence incident every five minutes.

Do the maths. That's just over 105,000 'incidents' annually.

But here are some other stats to lay alongside.

Annual imprisonments for:

Acts intending to cause injury - 1,387
Sexual assault and related offences - 434
Dangerous or negligent acts endangering persons - 77
Homicide and related offences - 50
Abduction, harassment and other offences against the person - 189

All of the above might result from family violence incidents. I have purposefully gone to the other extreme ie the worst offences as demonstrated by an imprisonment outcome.

So a maximum of 2,137 men and women are imprisoned due to family violence incidents.

I understand that many many more will be charged and prosecuted and sentenced to lesser punishments but my thesis remains (as it does with child abuse and neglect statistics).

A good chunk of the calls to police represent individuals resorting to authority arbitration and administration of family disputes. As people have increasingly become dependent on the 'benevolent' welfare state so they have lost the initiative and intelligence to sort their own shit out.

High unemployment decides election outcomes?

Mike Hosking had a piece in the NZ Herald suggesting that National will be in trouble in 2017 if unemployment is over 6 percent.

He may be right. Below are the last four changes of government and what was happening with the unemployment rates at the time. Govt change happens when unemployment is 'relatively' high and trending up. The only exception on the trend was when National lost in 1999, but the downward trend was very slow and patchy through out the second half of the 1990s:



26 July 1984  (NA by current measurement but unemployment benefit numbers rising with a bullet)
2 November 1990    8%      trending up
10 December 1999  6.8%   trending down
19 November 2008  6.3%    trending up

"Won't someone please think of the childless?"

So said "libertarian" senator David Leyonhjelm from NSW supporting legislation to remove welfare from parents who won't immunise their children.

The central issue aside, what a difference to NZ discourse:

"To the childless people of Australia, I want to say, on behalf of this Parliament, thank you for being childless.
"You work for more years and become more productive than the rest of Australia. You pay thousands and thousands of dollars more tax than other Australians. You get next to no welfare ...
"But you pay when other people get pregnant, you pay when they give birth, you pay when they stay at home to look after their offspring ..." Senator Leyonhjelm said.
The Liberal Democrat said that he was sorry than instead of receiving thanks, Australians without children were "often ignored, pitied, considered strange, or even thought of as irresponsible".
"For your sake, I hope the children you are forced to support don't end up as juvenile delinquents, and I hope that they get immunised so that you don't end up getting sick. Because you'll pay then, too." 

I suppose the immediate objection is that a "libertarian" senator would not support the state forcing parents to immunise their children. But the state isn't. It is withdrawing other people's money from those who refuse to.

Further dumbing-down at RadioLive

The only remaining reason I listen to RadioLive is disappearing.

Veteran broadcaster Sean Plunket has been axed from RadioLive's morning talkback show – and it is believed he could be replaced by long-time colleague Mark Sainsbury.

When MediaWorks sacked John Tamihere they killed the intellectual bite from the afternoon show. Now they are going to purge the pithy wit and humour that is Plunket.

Just what sort of audience they are seeking is a mystery to me. That stands to reason though, because I'm not it.

I wish I'd never read this

Don't read this story of child abuse and murder if you don't want to start your day depressed.

Throughout I felt angry until the last line:

It is understood she has now had a baby with a new partner since her release from prison.

Then I just felt very sad.

Remember this one next time you hear some feminist bleeding-heart lecturing about the sanctity of female reproductive rights.

DomPost at it again

The DomPost is a highly manipulative paper. If they publish a piece that is in conflict with their own editorial viewpoint some trick will be employed to twist it.

Today's prime example is the appearance of this headline in BusinessDay:

Living wage good for singles


Naturally I look first for the author. Eric Crampton. Well there is no way Eric Crampton would be plumping for the living wage.

The guts of his column deals with how the living wage is not an effective tool for lifting the living standards of those with dependent families because of the commensurate loss of WFF assistance. The majority of council workers are not supporting families so the living wage fails in targeting those most in need. He says central govt is better placed to design income support via the tax system. He then works through some of the negative but "logical" effects of the WCC imposing the living wage on contractors (ruling pending in the courts).

The implication can be drawn that the living wage is good for singles despite not helping the partnered-with-children.

But is isn't good for the ratepayers (everyone directly or indirectly, including singles) if it leads to "higher rates, fewer services, or more debt" .

It also won't be good for singles, particularly the young, if it drives up unemployment.

KidsCan talk up a problem they can't solve

A brief piece in today's DomPost describes how a "crisis" at KidsCan is leading to nearly 600 Wellington school children going without "basic healthcare, food and clothing from the charity".

Chapman said it cost about $8000 a child each year to provide the support. 

That is a staggering sum which poses the question, how much does it take to operate KidsCan?

The report then goes on to say that 260,000 children are living in poverty; 180,000 children are living without the basic needs of food, clothing and warmth.

To attend to all the need, KidsCan would require over $2 billion.

No wonder they had to get into the business of child sponsorship. Unfortunately they have over-promised and under-delivered. Which says something about what potential donors think about the cause.

I'll stick with funding the most-basic education of a  Nigerian child whose family is being provided with a hygienic toilet to prevent sickness and death.