The proportions are much below their peak rates around 15 years ago but are still too high.
In 2023-24, New Zealand’s child material hardship rate on a standard measure was 13% for children aged 0-17 years. The average for European Union countries was 14%. On the severe material deprivation measure, our 5% rate was bettered by 13 of those 29 member countries. Several of those countries also have lower incomes per capita than New Zealand.
The richness of the report lies in its detailed breakdowns. The headline aggregate statistics are sliced in over a dozen ways - by age, household composition, earnings, liquid assets, ethnicity, housing ownership and tenure and disability. The report quantifies the effects of high housing costs on after-tax incomes.
Children most likely to face material hardship are those in households with certain features ─ such as no market income, no liquid assets, only one parent and social housing. Children classified as Māori or Pacific people are a high-risk category. Household disability also significantly adds to the challenges.
The report stresses that belonging to a category is not destiny. For example, the overlap between being in a low-income household and being in hardship is typically only 45%. Many one-parent Māori and Pacific households will be doing well.
Individual agency matters. US social scientist Charles Murray, emphasised the importance of attitudes to work, stable marriage, parental responsibility and self-reliance. Researchers building on Murray's work distil this into a "success sequence": avoid teenage pregnancy, complete schooling, get a job and stay in work, marry and stay married, and only have children once you can afford them.
Of course, there are still no guarantees. Bad luck, accidents and disability can wreck anything.
There is much that governments do that makes it harder or easier for young adults to achieve such goals. The quality of public education is crucial. Unaffordable housing is a policy-driven disaster. Barriers to first jobs are too high. Welfare programmes need to be rigorously evaluated.
Governments have put too many barriers in the way of kids making the transition from public education to work. This is like cutting off the bottom rungs of the ladder the young need to climb. Disruptive AI advances add to the concern.
Dr Bryce Wilkinson is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative, Director of Capital Economics, and former Director of the New Zealand Treasury. His articles can be seen HERE. - where this article was sourced
The richness of the report lies in its detailed breakdowns. The headline aggregate statistics are sliced in over a dozen ways - by age, household composition, earnings, liquid assets, ethnicity, housing ownership and tenure and disability. The report quantifies the effects of high housing costs on after-tax incomes.
Children most likely to face material hardship are those in households with certain features ─ such as no market income, no liquid assets, only one parent and social housing. Children classified as Māori or Pacific people are a high-risk category. Household disability also significantly adds to the challenges.
The report stresses that belonging to a category is not destiny. For example, the overlap between being in a low-income household and being in hardship is typically only 45%. Many one-parent Māori and Pacific households will be doing well.
Individual agency matters. US social scientist Charles Murray, emphasised the importance of attitudes to work, stable marriage, parental responsibility and self-reliance. Researchers building on Murray's work distil this into a "success sequence": avoid teenage pregnancy, complete schooling, get a job and stay in work, marry and stay married, and only have children once you can afford them.
Of course, there are still no guarantees. Bad luck, accidents and disability can wreck anything.
There is much that governments do that makes it harder or easier for young adults to achieve such goals. The quality of public education is crucial. Unaffordable housing is a policy-driven disaster. Barriers to first jobs are too high. Welfare programmes need to be rigorously evaluated.
Governments have put too many barriers in the way of kids making the transition from public education to work. This is like cutting off the bottom rungs of the ladder the young need to climb. Disruptive AI advances add to the concern.
Dr Bryce Wilkinson is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative, Director of Capital Economics, and former Director of the New Zealand Treasury. His articles can be seen HERE. - where this article was sourced
6 comments:
One way to avoid child poverty is to support universal savings funded by tax cuts for low earners so their parents can accumulate wealth, a policy you have always opposed, Bryce. Should not folks like yourself, being an ACT party adviser, own up to your personal role in keeping the poorest in the country poor.
Here's an idea thats completely radical and anathema to NZ's overall way of thinking....remove all the regulation of pretty much everything. The cost of living would go down, business competition would increase, electricity would become significantly cheaper, even removing things like minimum wage would increase the number of people working because businesses wouldn't be so scared to hire people and people would start to decide what they're prepared to work for.
The most successful economies in the world, with the lowest overall poverty rates are aso the lease regulated economies.
The governments job should not be to just make laws...NZ has made more laws than just about anywhere else on earth and all its done is made it harder to hire workers, difficult to get rid of bad tenants, difficult to rent out a perfectly liveable house, made electricity incredibly expensive, made home building way too expensive, and made it a very difficult place to set up or run a business....
You want to end child poverty - then get the government out of the way of everything else and child poverty will fix itself.
(If you want an example - when labour made it difficult and costly for private citizens to be landlords and removed all incentives for private citizens to invest in rental properties the pool of long term rental properties decreased massively and the cost of renting went up hugely and lots of people became homeless - when the govt changed and landlords were no longer treated like scum rental properties magically became available again and rents dropped.)
The flaw in your argument Robert is the assumption that cutting taxes for low earners will allow them to accumulate wealth. Given that they already receive approx $30,000 per year (in income support, health and education services ) more than they currently pay in taxes according to Treasury analysis, why are they not already ‘accumulating wealth’’? - possibly because it’s much more fun to spend it now, rather than saving it for some indeterminate future?
Bryce, if your "thoughts for reducing child material hardship" boil down to "avoid teenage pregnancy, complete schooling, get a job and stay in work, marry and stay married, and only have children once you can afford them", then good on you, you're right on the money. Those who don't do that, typically have impoverished kids. But then you hoist yourself by your own petard by blaming the Government for those failings. "Governments have put too many barriers in the way of kids making the transition from public education to work"? In the space of one short article you seem to have gone from an intelligent observer to a wokester apologist for the people who are hell bent on a life of depravity and failure. Breaking Views has published some very insightful comments recently from well-intended individuals who have (a) tried to guide struggling kiwis away from their profligate habits, and (b) tried to instill a work ethic into young supposed job-seekers. If you want to know why we have child poverty, just ask those commentators.
We’re stuffed, stay in work, stay married (or together) show your children a positive life example. Not going to happen, even the Smithsonian recognises these as White supremacy traits.
We used to have a Labour movement that recognised education was the way forward. Not anymore
Hi Anonymous, i was trying to promote my article with Sir Roger Douglas linked below on tax cuts with the money going into compulsory savings accounts so low earners had to save the funds and couldn't waste them
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00779954.2025.2496872
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