by Holly Walker
The evidence is in! A number of key reports have been released over the past week that provide us with some important pointers about what we need to be doing to address child poverty.
Firstly the Government released their summary of submissions on the Green Paper process on vulnerable children. As the government acknowledged in their summary, many of these submissions called on the government to address the root causes of child vulnerability by tackling child poverty.
Every Child Counts released ‘The Netherlands Study’ which investigated the Netherland’s relatively good record on the issue of child poverty, looking at the policies in place which contributed to these more positive outcomes. While the report acknowledged the importance of context for policy measures, its most important finding is directly applicable to a New Zealand context – and that is the need for an investment approach to our children. New Zealand chronically under invests in our children (we spend less than half of the OECD average on children under 6)[1] and we pay for it dearly in longer term negative social outcomes (costing us approximately $8bn). Our health and justice bills to name but a few could be drastically reduced and our productivity increased in the longer term by investment in positive outcomes for our children.
The Ministry of Social Development’s last week released an updated Household Incomes Report. This report shows an increase in inequality since 2007 and little or no change in New Zealand’s very high child poverty rates (25%). The Government has refused to acknowledge the true meaning of this report and failing to grasp its findings. In the House yesterday the Prime Minister claimed the report showed an increase of medium incomes of 3%. In actual fact the report clearly shows that median household incomes decreased by 3% (see page 8). Meanwhile, despite the fact that there was a recession, the top decile actually managed an increase in income. This rise in inequality will have negative impacts on society as a whole, and particularly acute negative impacts on vulnerable populations such as children.
Yesterday the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Child Poverty released their excellent consultation paper “Solutions to Child Poverty in New Zealand”. This is an easy to read document based on the best national and international evidence that sets out straight forward and pragmatic solutions to child poverty. I encourage you to read it and to send the Group your feedback by the 12th of October 2012 at childpoverty@occ.org.nz.
We were encouraged to hear Minister Bennett tell the House yesterday that she would be working with the Expert Advisory Group in preparing the White Paper. Perhaps if this is going to be a serious working relationship she should dissuade the Prime Minister from erroneously referring to the groups proposed or supported solutions as “dopey ideas”. In the House yesterday the Prime Minister seemed to mistake the purpose of the Income Tax (Universalisation of the In-Work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill as somehow “giving rich families even more money” – what the Bill actually does is extend the IWTC to families on the benefit. We are not sure if he just hasn’t read the Bill or he misspoke and meant to say he wouldn’t be supporting it because it doesn’t give rich families even more money.
There is now more than enough evidence that child poverty is a serious issue in New Zealand and that there are cost effective solutions that the Government could be implementing. I look forward to seeing this evidence reflected in the White Paper. I think the least we can expect is some action on the issue in line with what we now know. I will be watching closely over the next couple of months to see whether this eventuates.
Published in Society & Culture by Holly Walker on Wed, August 29th, 2012
Tags: end child poverty
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Evidence in Northland is that when social workers there channelled some of their funding allocation to food in schools they achieved their goal of reducing truancy. As better education is one way to end inter-generational dependency this was a good outcome. However, as we know, National cancelled this programme saying it diminished parental responsibility to feed their own children.
So we should have food in poor area schools. Certainly this supplements the B4 School Well Child programme – as does improved palcement in pre school.
So would better quality rental accomodation via a required standard before tenants can be charged as is already Green policy – thus healthier homes for children of low income parents. This also assists us in creating jobs and reducing our power consumption – making it easier to use only renewable sources.
From here it is a matter of improving incomes for parents and support for low income parents – maybe even some budget management and direction to use of funds.
Certainly here I disagree with the recommendation for a universal child benefit, preferring instead a social wage (dole level – about $200 a week) to non working mothers with children under 5 – working mothers given child care funding assistance on a needs basis. This assistance is on a par with a non work tested DPB payment to sole parents until the child is 5. Those parents with children over 5 receiving the social wage on a work tested basis – as for sole parents. We should treat non working parents looking after children equally.
This reduces need for tax credits to support low income parents and reduces management costs of the taxation system.
Sure this leaves the In Work tax credit issue to last – first because we can more easily get support for direct support for children such as food in schools and better rental housing standards. And second because improving support to parental child rearing beyond a social wage (first year at the minimum wage and the nest 4 years at the social wage/dole level) is best done by access to jobs and child care including after school – where we would also find greater support from others.
There is a need to note the poverty that happens to middle class families when a wage is lost (given their prior outgoing commitments in house ownership) – so a social wage to the non working parent is a means to alleviate hardship here. We cannot expect support from these people for passing the In Work tax credit to beneficiaries until we act on this first.
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What makes you think that the parents, who already aren’t looking after their kids, will actually pass on any increased pay or benefit, and won’t just spend the money on booze, drugs or gambling?
And how high do you think you can raise taxes on working parents who are already struggling looking after their own kids before they start pushing back when they see the money you are taking off them being wasted.
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Holly – you are guaranteed to fail solving child poverty if you don’t have any plan to address the causes.
The main reason for child poverty in NZ is parents failing to prepare properly before they have a family.
Do they work to get themselves qualified and in a sound financial and secure emmotional position BEFORE they have a family?
Do they restrict the number of children they have, to a number they can actually afford to look after?
If people did those two things, we’d just about wipe out child poverty.
But when the govt tried to offer free contraception to those on the DPB, many here argued for the “right” of beneficiaries to have as many children as they want – a luxury workers can’t afford.
And what’s the plan to deal with one of the world’s highest rates of teenage pregnancy ? – something that leads to a huge amount of childhood poverty, rates of child abuse and neglect 500% higher than older mothers, etc etc.
If the main stream of your plan is to dump truckloads of money over the cliff so those people falling off have a softer landing, you’ll never ever solve the problem of them going over in the first place.
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While I prefer to focus on what can be done to directly help children (for tactical reasons), or to deliver support to the parents in ways (strategic preference) other than a universal child benefit in general I fully expect that improved financial support would be an effective way to reduce child poverty in most cases. Where it did not and child poverty continued would then warrant some quite targeted policy making – but there is no excuse for inaction leaving 4 out of 5 in poverty when that can be changed.
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The natioanl party and its supporters have spoken ……….. their message is money spent on poor children is wasted money which a rich greedy person like John Keys could use.
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There are a range of factors that result in child poverty and there are a number of things that can be done to help minimise the number of children exposed to this poverty.
The team “break the cycle” applies in this situation, where children grow up in an environment that is far from ideal and before they know it they are starting the cycle again by having children. And it can quite literally be “before they know it”, at the age of 10 they are still an innocent child with no means to escape, at the age of 15 or 16 they can be bringing their own children into this world. And so it continues. Not that these are the only people exposed to child poverty, but this is a commonly seen group of people.
Taking financial assistance out of the equation, there are plenty of other options to explore. Warm, dry, healthy homes is a big one. Healthy food is another. Access to medical care is also important.
If these three things can be provided to every child, then we are already a long way towards giving our children a great start in life.
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