by Holly Walker
The recently-appointed Experts Advisory Group on Child Poverty is floating the idea of a law to halve child poverty in ten years, modeled on the British Child Poverty Act of 2010.
The group is absolutely right that we need a multi-party agreement to end child poverty, and we need all parties, as well as iwi, hapu, community and business, to commit to a plan of action. Setting dates and targets that can be reviewed and measured is vital as well.
The British Act is a good example, although I note that it doesn’t actually set out the policies that will be enacted to end child poverty; it merely establishes the definition and measurement framework against which to assess progress. Governments are responsible for producing Child Poverty Strategies to achieve the targets set in the Act, and must refresh these every three years. Is this enough, or do we need all parties to agree on the actual strategies to end poverty?
As an example of what can be achieved when all political parties put their differences aside and reach consensus on a policy, consider this: we have a cross-party consensus on superannuation in New Zealand. We also have one of the lowest rates of elderly poverty in the OECD.
We have no such consensus on children, and we have one of the highest rates of child poverty in the OECD. Just imagine what we could do if we put our differences aside and got on with it.
So I welcome this idea from the Experts Advisory Group. However, merely halving child poverty in 10 years is not ambitious enough.
We know that the first three years is vital for every child, for their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. If we can guarantee the essentials to children in these crucial years, we guarantee them genuine opportunities for life.
The Every Child Counts Coalition is currently running a campaign entitled ‘1000 days to get it right for every child‘. 1000 days represents the first three years of a child’s life, but also three years of a Parliamentary term.
As of today there are 840 left for the 50th Parliament.
Merely halving child poverty by 2010 means those 1000 days will pass by for 10 years worth of children with no action for many. That’s not good enough.
Before the election, the Green Party developed solutions that could bring 100,000 children out of poverty in three years (there are an estimated 270,000 children living in poverty in New Zealand). They were costed, practical solutions, that could genuinely be achieved in three years:
- Make Working for Families work for every low-income family
- Provide better study support for sole parents and beneficiaries
- Raise the minimum wage to help working parents
- Make sure rental properties are warm and healthy for kids.
So why pussyfoot around? Let’s set the goal of halving child poverty in one Parliamentary term, and ending it in two. When we know thousands of children are living those crucial early years without adequate support, aren’t we morally obliged to act? I think we are.
And since we’ll save up to $6 billion per year by addressing the cost to our economy of allowing child poverty to go unsolved, I think we’re fiscally obliged to act too.
During June and July I’m holding screenings of Bryan Bruce’s now infamous Inside Child Poverty documentary, first screened in the week before last year’s election, at various locations around the country. I won’t just be pushing the Green Party barrow, but hope to engage in genuine discussion about what we need to do to achieve cross-party consensus on this most pressing issue.
I hope you can join me at a screening in your area. Details of the first three screenings in Whangarei, Lower Hutt, and Rotorua here (and check back as details of further screenings are added).
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Health & Wellbeing by Holly Walker on Mon, May 28th, 2012
Tags: Bryan Bruce, child poverty, children, childrens' commissioner, end child poverty, Every Child Counts, Experts Advisory Group on Child Poverty, Holly Walker, Inside Child Poverty, OECD
More posts by Holly Walker | more about Holly Walker
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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Can we end child poverty in two Parliamentary terms?
Not a chance if you have policies that reward people even more than we are for making bad decisions, and make not even the slightest effort to try to get them to make better decisions.
You policies will make the problem worse – not better.
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Given even National support 1 and 4 to some degree and other parties 2 and 3, getting cross party support is not that unlikely.
Even photonz for all his negativity could not actually critique any of the 4 ideas suggested.
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News today that more than 1 in 5 children are born to someone on a benefit.
If you don’t address those problems, you are doomed to fail with solving child poverty.
There will never be enough money to solve the problem just by throwing money at it, and it won’t stop people making bad decisions.
We need to do everything we can to educate, encourage, cajoulle, persuade, bribe, and push people to work themselves into a secure financial and emotional situation BEFORE they have children.
Right now there is a huge failure by all polititians to do anything about this.
But worse – when there is a good idea (free contraception) it is shot down not because it’s a bad idea, but because the it was the othere sides idea.
All we ever hear is ideas about dumping truckloads of money over the cliff in the hope that people at the bottom making bad decisions will magically start making good decisions.
Fat chance.
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So the solution is to reshape our economy to get more people on a living wage / in fulltime work, right?
So it now comes down to policy prescription.
Do you provide people with more opportunities and encouragement along with the protections of a decent minimum wage so that there is a clear differential between welfare dependency and low skill employment (positive and expensive) or do you implement regressive policy aimed at blaming the poor for their own predicament and inadequacy and furthermore, punishing their kids (negative and inexpensive).
But worse – when there is a good idea (free contraception) it is shot down not because it’s a bad idea, but because the it was the othere sides idea.
Not surprisingly you’ve misrepresented this again. It was quite clear in other threads that free contraception (incl doctors visit and prescription) is effectively already available to anyone with a community services card.
It was shot down because the discussion was framed as an easy target bait-and-switch by the National party when they were getting caned over John Banks.
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Nothing stops people making bad decisions, but leaving their child in poverty is what too often will result in the inter-generational welfare dependency because of the impact on health and educational outcome.
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SPC says “Nothing stops people making bad decisions”
That sounds like a surrender flag right at from the start, dooming yourself to failure.
There are many way to stop people making bad decisions. We’ve improved drink driving. We’re lowering smoking rates.
But there’s been a big fat failure by polititians to do anything about world leading pregnancy rates in our teenagers, and high pregnancy rates by people who are completely unable to give kids the financial and emotional security they need.
We can improve insulation in homes (good idea that I’ve backed stongly), and we can add more money to benefits and WFF, but it will have to be CUT from somewhere else.
And when it costs on average $250,000 to look after a child until it leaves home, then there’ll never be enough money to stop poor people being poor.
And all these solutions fail to address the SOURCE of the problem.
They’ve just bandages over the holes in the bath tub, when nobody is bothering to turn off the tap.
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I released statistics today that show that 22 percent of babies born last year were dependent on a benefit by year-end. This isn’t an aberrant stat. Through good times and bad between one in four and one in five children is added to a new or existing benefit at or shortly after their birth. You won’t solve ‘child poverty’ without reducing this pattern of behaviour.
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Keeping women in poverty increases pregnancy rates.
Giving women better incomes, options and education decreases them.
Keeping those at the bottom end on an inadequate income so a few at the top can have way more than the value of their earnings, or contribution, as Photo advocates, can only accentuate the problems he pretends to be so concerned about.
The source of Photo’s problem is poverty. Addressing symptoms will not solve it.
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Kerry says “Keeping women in poverty increases pregnancy rates.”
Having 5 babies that cost on average $250,000 each to bring up, when you have no qualifications, no secure finances, and no secure partner, will make anyone poor.
The poverty is self inflicted.
Highly qualified people with a secure partner both on good incomes can’t afford five kids.
But Kerry sees no reson why an unqualified mum on the DPB shouldn’t be allowed the “right” to have as many kids as she wants, even if she can’t afford them or look after them properly.
And we wonder why we have such problems.
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Everyone has a right to have enough to feed, dress house and care for their health, and participate in society. Without the requirement to make useless soon to be obsolescent widgets or invent ever more creative ways of parting others from their money, to make a living.
A top tax rate the same as Australia and ending the universal pension entitlement would more than pay for it. Ending the employer subsidy, WFF and making them pay the real costs of their labour would help also.
The advantages are many. But to name a few:
Ends child poverty and the incentive to “breed” for a living that Photo is so concerned about.
Ends poverty amongst young people in the same way
Enables those who do volunteer work for society.
Ends the disincentive to work part time that current benefit abatement rates offer.
Frees up WINZ staff to actually help people into work and education.
Saves a huge amount of the administration cost of WINZ staff deciding if someone is worthy.
Encourages entrepreneurship because the penalty for failure is not total poverty for the entrepreneur and their family.
Reduces the incentives to produce and consume simply to increase employment.
Of course it will be opposed by those employers who are accustomed to having their staff costs subsidised by their employees and tax payers.
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The evidence does not agree with you Photo.
It has been shown all around the world that the best way to reduce pregnancy rates is to increase the wealth, options and education of women.
You expect to reduce them by doing the opposite. LOL.
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But it isn’t possible within the present system, which is why talking about solutions to poverty is a waste of time, unless you are prepared to seriously change things.
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Photo. Compares pregnancy rates to the OECD average. Most OECD countries are concerned about birth rates below population replacement. Can’t have economic growth without expansion in consumers.
Like his other fudged statistics, doesn’t mean ours is particularly high. Just theirs are at all time lows. We also have a higher proportion of young people at child bearing age than most. Especially among the Polynesian population.
Those kids are our future. Unless we invest in giving them a good start in life now we are storing up huge problems for the future.
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Sam. We do need to seriously change things.
The gap between rich and poor is now much greater than before the French, American and Russian revolutions.
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We’ve got school girls deliberately getting pregnant because they think $300-$400 per week on the DPB is a lot of money, and Kerry thinks giving them EVEN MORE MONEY will mean less get pregnant.
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Kerry says “Photo. Compares pregnancy rates to the OECD average. Most OECD countries are concerned about birth rates below population replacement. Can’t have economic growth without expansion in consumers.”
Kerry deliberately misses out the “teenage”, in “teenage pregnancy rates” so he can mislead.
And he thinks that dysfunctional families who suck a quarter of a million dollars in benefits are a boost to the country (even though they take up a lifetimes income tax from the average worker).
Why don’t you put on your rose tinted glasses and give us a laugh about how good things were under Muldoon.
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I don’t quite follow what you are intending to do. I can imagine how you can spend $6 billion in a year but it’s not clear where the $6 billion you said you would save is going to come from.
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Why do you think that they will still bother getting pregnant if they, in your scenario, are getting pregnant for $300 a week if they can get $500 a week without the bother of pregnancy.
Young people get pregnant for many reasons. Money is not the major one with most of them.
Of course. Photo, being an RWNJ, cannot conceive of people that do things for reasons other than money.
And I was earning the equivalent today of 160k a year before Muldoon. Now I am doing the same job with half the people and a third more hours for half the pay. No wonder why anyone younger in a skilled career has left NZ.
Not very funny for most of us as skilled incomes have dropped while semi-skilled accountants and rich bludgers incomes have risen over 17% annually..
Bad as Muldoon was, we were still better of than under your system.
He was just the beginning of the right wing fuckups that have ruled NZ ever since.
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Kerry says “Bad as Muldoon was, we were still better of than under your system.”
No were weren’t better – it’s just that back then you happened to be one of the rich pricks that you now complain about all the time.
Now you’re on $80,000 and still continually whining and moaning.
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Getting flustered now Photo. Is your bullshit feed off duty for the night so you have to make up your own crap.
Ask anyone who started work in the 70′s if they are better off now.
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Who is the one who continually whines and moans about young mothers. Upset because you are not getting any? Eh!
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Kerry reaches the epitome of his intellect and debating skills with “Upset because you are not getting any? Eh!”
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No were weren’t better. Quack.
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“New Zealand’s child poverty rate – one in every five children – was in line with the OECD average of 20 per cent,..”
Then claims “we have one of the highest rates of child poverty in the OECD.”
But again OECD graphs show we are very close (but slightly better) than the OECD average – see
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/43/41929552.pdf
The way to get rid of child poverty is very simple – ensure parents are financially and emotionally secure before they have their children.
And that starts with addressing problems like some of the highest school drop out rates in the OECD and the second highest teenage pregnancy rate.
There needs to be social campaigns like those for smoking, cervical and breast screening, drink driving etc, to get prospective parents to work themselves into a position where they can provide their children with the security they need, BEFORE they have them.
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Poverty is affected by unemployment rates and given that European unemployment is higher than ours, that we are middling in the table is no cause for any satisfaction.
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The way to get rid of child poverty is very simple – ensure parents are financially and emotionally secure before they have their children.
This is the ideal, and while life is not often as clear cut as this it should still be something to aim for.
But the cultural nihilists typically want to have their cake and eat it to. On the one hand they are tearing down institutions and traditions that provide the best structure for healthy happy families, the next minute they are pointing the finger at defenders of these traditions as bigots, racists, and barriers to progress.
A stable home for children is based around a stable relationship between the mother and the father, they will achieve this (or not) depending on the values they hold.
If parents take the attitude “the two become one” in regard to their role as parents, the children will thrive, if they lack commitment to each other the children will suffer.
If anything we should be strengthening heterosexual institutions such as marriage to help our kids and reduce child poverty.
But along come the cultural nihilists……….
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Who are the ones advocating financial help for parents raising up children and who are opposing this?
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What do the greens give shit about child poverty? none of their policies will address it. Minimum wage hikes will go straight to the land lord. Property under-supply makes poverty inevitable…especially as the underclass will always trade smokes and booze for their children’s nutrition.
And no – state housing is a red herring, and a totally unnecessary one at that. We can’t afford it as long as land is crazy expensive. You MUST get rid of the MUL’s.
Wittingly or not the greens are really the land lords party.
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“”The way to get rid of child poverty is very simple – ensure parents are financially and emotionally secure before they have their children.”"
And you want to ensure this by making sure their parents stay poor?
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Photo shows repeatedly he is a nasty little man with an obsessive complex about young mothers.
Blaming poverty on the results of poverty is not the answer.
Reducing poverty and it’s effects is.
Notice Photo is OK about the 41% of social welfare paid on pensions. Half at least to wealthy tax dodgers.
While obsessing about a small proportion of the 8% used for the DPB.
The majority of DPB recipients whatever their age, were in a relationship they considered stable when they had children.
The typical DPB recipient is not a young solo mother, but a women in her thirties or forties bringing up children after her spouse left.
The ones that use trust funds to hide their income while we pay for their kids.
A far greater cost than the one Photo obsesses about.
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So now Kerry thinks the “typical” person on the DPB is a rich mum with a trust fund.
Keep up the entertainment Kerry.
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Here’s another one. Kerry thinks “half at least” of old age pensioners are “wealthy tax dodgers”
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Aren’t you going to answer the points Photo.
You should see a psychiatrist about your unhealthy obsession with teenagers having sex.
Then maybe you would shut up and stop with irrelevancies and advocating failed Neo-lib BAU, while the grownups are trying to find workable solutions.
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Kerry says “You should see a psychiatrist about your unhealthy obsession with teenagers having sex.”
I’ve talked about the well documented problems with teenagers having babies. I haven’t said a single thing about them having sex.
YOU repeatedly make pathetic attempts of sexual slurs.
The operative word in the previous sentence is “pathetic”. Perhaps “creepy” should be added as well.
Children born to teenagers have a
- 250% higher chance of dropping out of school
- 250% higher chance of being a teen parent
- 200% higher chance of being long term unemployed
- 300% higher chance of being violent
- 900% higher chance of being killed
That you try to sideline the problem being discussed by fabricating sexual slurs shows everyone exactly what type of person you are.
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Photo. Inconsistent much.
I thought you were worried about the costs of teen parents to the poor old tax payer.
Now you seem to be worried about their children.
But you want to fix that by starving their children.
Depriving them of resources and keeping them poor.
That is creepy.
I apologise if I find it hard to find words to describe my contempt for people like you . Those who have benefited from our society who now want to pull the ladder up behind them.
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Kerry – your continual sexual slurs make you sound like a creepy old man.
Particularly when the debate didn’t even include the subject.
You want to fix the problem by dumping truckloads of taxpayers money off the cliff on top of the people who have jumped off.
But you don’t even acknowledge that there is a problem with them jumping off in the first place, let alone do a single thing to stop them jumping off.
If you continually ignore the source of the problem, you will continually fail to fix it.
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I don’t think that’s completely fair to photonz1. I don’t think he is suggesting starving children!
I do however think he is mixing up cause and effect.
Photonz1 has produced numerous statistics about the effects and costs of young people having kids.
What he hasn’t proposed is any solution to the issue as he sees it – the operative questions being (if I am to paraphrase) if one is to take the premise teen pregnancy is a massive and detrimental phenomenon in NZ;
(i) how can you encourage young poor people with limited prospects not to have kids – positive or punitive?
(ii) if they do have kids, how can you support those families without enabling or entrenching that behaviour?
(iii) how can you raise young families out of entrenched poverty?
(iv) how can you stop those kids going on to do the same as their parents?
Photonz1 – maybe this a good place to start?
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(i) how can you encourage young poor people with limited prospects not to have kids – positive or punitive?
1/ We don’t have a compulsory life skills courses for high schools and it’s desperately needed. My wife sees girls every week who think $300-$400 a week on the DBP is big bucks. And girls who have got pregnant to go on the DBP only to find they are too young to qualify.
It needs to teach a whole range of things from budgeting, how to save and invest without losing all your money, pros and cons of renting vs buying a house, the real costs of smoking, the need to get a qualification with fewer and fewer low skilled jobs around etc etc.
2/ More alternative education/work qualifications, perhaps charter schools or some other option that will work for kids who drop out of the mainstream system.
3/ Social campaign to get people to fully prepare both financially and emotionally BEFORE they start a family
4/ Encourage more adoption. We currently have many couples who can’t have kids and many young mothers who can’t look after their kids, don’t really want to look after their kids, didn’t really want them in the first place, and treat them like crap.
5/ There also need to be some sort of penalty. Extra children while on the DPB needs to be looked at.
Perhaps make it a rule that teenagers cannot get the DPB unless they do further education or training, so it’s not an escape from school for them
6/ Free contraception.
There’s plenty more ideas as well.
(ii) if they do have kids, how can you support those families without enabling or entrenching that behaviour?
Encourage more education and qualifications in solo mothers. Children living in poverty drops from 75% for mums on the DBP to 14% for solo mums who work.
(iii) how can you raise young families out of entrenched poverty?
Education, qualifications, and work is the only way. Handing out more and more money entrenches the problem further.
(iv) how can you stop those kids going on to do the same as their parents?
As above. It’s very very difficult to stop the cycle once it’s started.
That’s why we need a big effort in the teenage years to lower the numbers jumping off the cliff in the first place.
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Good Photo. That is actually what we need. Solutions not punishments.
Maybe you do have a conscience after all.
But that is going to increase the costs to tax payers. You are talking about ACTUALLY spending money on helping people now.
Instead of the policies you have been defending here for the last few years. Which have resulted in children living on cat food.
Reading Stanfords research though I would not be too keen on charter schools. 37% do worse than US state schools. Only 17% do better. Which is pretty damning considering how poor the US state school system is compared to ours.
Our schools are already putting in alternatives. Mine has a trades academy which is very successful with non academic kids. Resources are a problem though.
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I even agree that practical life skills like budgeting, cooking and changing a tap washer, are sadly neglected.
That is to do with “for profit” universities, competing to get bums on seats, capturing the curriculum.
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Kerry says “Mine has a trades academy…..”
This is exactly the sort of thing we need more of. I know someone whose kids went to a similar school in the states (charter school), aimed primarily at science and technology (but not english, history art etc) and they thrived after nearly dropping out of the local state school.
Some charter schools are highly successful, some are not. Just like public schools.
In some states the charter schools perform significantly better, in some states significantly worse, largely depending on the very different systems they use.
I’m quite happy to spend money where it does a lot of good – always have been. Whether that’s insulation schemes, or life skills classes.
Kerry says “That is to do with “for profit” universities, competing to get bums on seats, capturing the curriculum.”
It’s worse than that. We’re putting 60% more people though law school than ever get work in law. Hundreds through photography courses even though none will get work.
How efficient is if for the taxpayer to provide tens of thousands of dollars in loans, the student to spend years of their life, and a lecturer teaching for years – all when right from the start there was never any chance of it leading to a job.
We need a radical shake up in qualifications. If we need more teachers and nurses, we should fund those degrees at a higher rate. If we need fewer lawyers and photograhers, we fund those at a lower rate. (or after x number of top students we fund extras at a lower rate).
The wastage of taxpayer (and student) dollars and years of student, teacher and instutution time is enormous.
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Child poverty refers to the phenomenon of children living in poverty. This applies to children that come from poor families or orphans being raised with limited
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Great, around these parts we mostly all tend to agree with my bands (WhEn PEts ATtacK!) lament that there is a whole generation of Kiwi women who can’t boil and egg and sew a button – nor for that matter blokes that can’t change tyres. Some, like me, would argue the implications for these lack of homemaker/ practical skills are a greater threat to N.Z society than those posed by Global Warming, but this is probably not the place to air such heresy. So moving on quickly it’s great to see united left/right support on this blog for these life-skills to be taught as a compulsory subject at N.Z High Schools. Stop John Keys cuts to essential subjects like Technology. A return to cherished days of ‘Home Economics’ and ‘Wood Work’ as espoused in our song.
Listen and Learn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3L_Q7WzEzQ
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“how can you encourage young poor people with limited prospects not to have kids – positive or punitive?”
If, as others claim here, large numbers are going on the DPB to have an income, enable them to have a decent life without the necessity of having children to get an income. A GMI!
As the total numbers of young solo Mums are in the thousands it cannot be that many, but I would agree that even a few having kids for an income is too many.
The solution, though, is not to punish them and their kids by keeping them in poverty, with all the resulting problems, but to give them better options.
Increasing the education, wealth and social power of women is the one proven non co-ercive method of cutting birth rates.
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Kerry says “Increasing the education, wealth and social power of women is the one proven non co-ercive method of cutting birth rates.”
If you don’t get pregnant and drop out of school, you are more likely to become educated, and have more wealth and social power.
You haven’t thought about what comes first.
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Child poverty and the lives of the poor always get worse under National.
The first step in helping get rid of child poverty is to elect people who actually care about such things.
The Nats would rather give tax cuts to the rich …. which they did in one parliamentary term.
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If you don’t get educated, you are more likely to fall pregnant young, which will in turn mean you probably will not be as wealthy, which will in turn mean it is more likely your children will not get as good an education as they could/should …
You see the problem is, once this vicious cycle is started, breaking out of it is not easy.
Mind you we were all warned about it nearly thirty years ago when Labour started experimenting with neo-liberalism. I guess our chickens have come home to roost.
I’m not quite sure what the answer is, but punishing people trapped in this cycle is unlikely to achieve your desired results.
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What comes first is POVERTY.
Poverty is what makes “breeding” for a living seem like a good option.
Poverty is what causes all the poor outcomes you ascribe to the children of teenage mums.
Poverty is what causes people to be caught in a trap of continuing poverty.
We are never going to solve problems caused by poverty by making people poorer.
Social security and minimum wages that are so low, there is almost no chance of climbing out of the poverty trap, causes all the problems you say you are concerned about.
Abatement rates for those earning a bit of money while on social security are higher than those for millionaires.
A two tier education system is going to make escape from poverty even harder.
Low wages are not even good capitalism. “Businesses that cannot meet the costs of the resources they use should be allowed to fail, so others can make better use of the resources/labour”.
Every business paying low wages means there is little demand. Hurting all business.
“You should pay your workers fairly because they are the source of your wealth” Adam Smith.
Three decades of Neo-Liberal meanness is coming back to bite us. And you want to make the victims lives harder.
A guaranteed minimum income, national super, has succeeded in practically eliminating poverty in the over 65′s. Less than 3% live in poverty, and that most likely is self inflicted.
If we are serious in eliminating poverty amongst children, 20% living in poverty, we would extend the GMI idea, that has been so successful with the elderly, to young people.
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What comes first is POVERTY.
Yeah, but until you stop defining poverty as an “index” you won’t have a clue about solving the real issues facing our economy or life in NZ.
By your measure, my family and I have been in poverty for 12 of the last 13 years, but somehow we own a car, a small business, 2 houses, I’ve been overseas twice, my wife once, and we go on at least two family holidays per year.
Once again, define poverty, because having enough money to get fu@ked up every day on booze or drugs and then complaining that the bills can’t be paid or the kids can’t be fed is not the same as being in ‘poverty’.
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National always brings in policy’s which makes lives harder for the poor and easier for the rich.
When the increase in child poverty under their governance is pointed out they often blame the poor and claim ” we dont know what real poverty is in New Zealand”.
Its part of the reason I see National as ‘plain evil’.
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What measure?
By my measure, if you can do all that, then you are not in poverty.
Unlike many people in New Zealand.
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But I am in poverty, the Greens said so, I simply do not earn enough money.
Perhaps “many people in New Zealand” have different values? different decision making on how money is spent? Perhaps some of these values are not productive for them and their families.
One thing is for absolute certain, throwing more money at the situation will achieve absolutely nothing if the underlying approach to ‘money’ is wrong.
How do you think I am able to live the life I do while technically in poverty Kerry?
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But I am in poverty, the Greens said so, I simply do not earn enough money.
@shunda
Where has anyone said this shunda?
The common measure of poverty in NZ is 60% of the median household income.
The median gross is about 63k p/a, therefore below 38k before tax (32k after) for a household would be the poverty measure.
If you have managed to raise a family, and own 2 investment properties on a family income 32k/pa then all credit to you.
You would make millions writing a book about how you did it!
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Don’t think Shunda is counting his expected capital gains on the income form his “investment properties” for one.
Shunda look up the Canadian MINCOM project. It may surprise you.
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Gregor, it turns out that it is actually 11 of the last 13 years we have been under that threshold, I assume that doesn’t include working for families? which we get in addition.
The houses we own are old run down properties, the one we live in was purchased before the property boom, but is worth little more now any way, though it offers reasonable accommodation and is warm, the second was trashed by the previous tenants and we got it cheap, we are currently fixing it up.
I don’t call these houses “investment properties” because they are not much of an investment, I call them ‘community investment’ because I aim to improve them slowly to help do my bit to improve the wider community in the low socio economic area I live in. When I have done these properties up, I will by another trashed house, do it up, and offer it for reasonable rent.
My values are such that I don’t value pomp and the illusion of prosperous living, I would rather improve the community I am in despite property investors telling me I am nuts.
I also try to live within my means and as free from debt as I am able to, this makes our money go twice as far compared to the folks that are drawn into stores like “DTR” like moths to a light bulb.
We have beneficiary neighbors that have nicer “stuff” than us, but they are also absolutely chained to that “stuff” and being completely controlled by compound interest.
It’s all about values, I am constantly trying to improve mine and the reward is absolutely worth it.
To help those in poverty, we need to help them see their role in the cycle, throwing money at them is like trying to stop a sieve leaking by adding more water.
The rich will still get their money.
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Don’t think Shunda is counting his expected capital gains on the income form his “investment properties” for one.
The capital gain will be so minimal compared to my labour and material costs that any “proper” property investor would sneer at even the thought of buying these properties.
Property investment is largely immoral in my opinion, my motives are quite different.
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@shunda
Yep, that number was ex WFF.
Also, that figure was 2011-22 dollars so worth bearing in mind that it was quite a lot lower 10 years or so ago, but that would have been offset to a degree by inflation.
Even so that’s quite a story. I’m serious when I say you collude make money out teaching people how to do it.
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Even so that’s quite a story. I’m serious when I say you collude make money out teaching people how to do it.
Collude?
We are still refining our ‘system’ but it really isn’t that complicated, it just requires self control when all those “things” appear in shiny pamphlets in the mail box and avoid paying interest like the plague.
I absolutely loath outfits like “DTR”, their business is almost 100% parasitic on the poor, or people that make poor financial decisions.
I can say with all honesty that I would love to help people with this stuff, I am not sure I am really ready to do that just yet, but I want to improve my community for my kids and see it reach it’s potential for sure.
I really have no idea how do do it though, so in the meantime I will fix up run down properties, do some landscaping and maybe something will come to me.
I have attracted some attention though, both negative and positive.
Got any ideas?
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Collude should read could.
iPad typo!
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