Pages

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Lindsay Mitchell: 1 in 5 babies born 2012 on welfare by year-end

Data released under the Official Information Act shows that 21.2 percent of babies born in 2012  were dependent on a caregiver receiving a welfare benefit by the end of the same year. Welfare commentator Lindsay Mitchell said that, "Over one in five babies reliant on welfare by year-end is a sobering and sad statistic. But it's worse for Maori at over 1 in 3 or 35.9 percent."

"There is now an established pattern of childbearing involving birth onto an existing benefit or recourse to welfare soon after.  This occurs during good and bad economic periods. For instance, in 2007, when New Zealand briefly experienced the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD, the percentage only reduced to 19.1%"

"In general, the younger that children go on welfare, the longer they will stay in the benefit system. This leads to chronic child poverty and the many associated risks."

"Current and forthcoming welfare reforms are aimed at reducing this incidence but the answer remains largely with young females who need to be persuaded to gain educational qualifications, work skills and a committed partner before embarking on motherhood. "

(Talking to Larry Williams on NewstalkZB about this issue)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you can't feed 'em dont breed 'em!

Anonymous said...

I am so fed up listening to the broken record of poverty statistics, child welfare and the tired old catch phrase.
It takes a village to raise a child.
It doesn't take a village, it takes two good parents.
The complete reluctance to address the "poverty" issue is the pivotal issue the country has... because not a single politician is brave enough to call it what it is...
"poor decision making, by poor parents"

Anonymous said...

lets get back to basics, education is the key to everything - basic education for living like budgeting, growing your own veges, basic cooking skills, come on kiwi's.

Dave Hill said...

No one has to have a baby or get pregnant these days, contraception is freely available. So why are so many ill equipped people having children.. the answer is simple our welfare system pays large amounts of money to dysfunctional parents or more often solo parent, after all its better than being on the dole.

Anonymous said...

I've got to admit I'm in favour of paying a bounty for sterilisation. Not just paying for the operation but offering $10,000 to be sterilised.

Post a Comment

Thanks for engaging in the debate!

Because this is a public forum, we will only publish comments that are respectful and do NOT contain links to other sites. We appreciate your cooperation.