Lindsay Mitchell: Update on child poverty statistics

The Child Poverty Action Group is holding a summit later this month. This statement is from their release about it:

Late into 2019, 174,000 children living in the most impoverished, desperate situations are yet to see any real gain.

It is quite incorrect to say "late into 2019" and put a number on it. But thanks anyway for prompting me to update myself on where the statistics are at.


Statistics NZ says:

"We have made improvements to the data source for measuring child poverty in the future, including increasing the sample size from between 3,000 and 5,500 to 20,000 households. These improvements were implemented in the 2018/19 HES, which is collected between July 2018 and June 2019. First child poverty results from this survey will be available early in 2020."

The figure of 174,000 is for the year ending June 2018. The definition for this group is:

 h) Percentage of children living in households in New Zealand in each financial year who fell in: Low income: less than 40% median equivalised disposable household income after housing costs (AHC) for the financial year

But there are multiple measures of poverty. Here's another:

i) Percentage of children living in households in
New Zealand in each financial year who fell in: Severe material hardship 

That number is 65,000

As that is the lowest number by any measure, these must be the "most impoverished".

You can find the various measures here.

They comprise a) through to j) 

The numbers range from  65,000 to 341,000

By 7 out of 9 measures (there is no d) table) child poverty grew between 2017 and 2018.

Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator who blogs HERE.