pn611. Suffer the Children: a critique of government's plans to reduce child poverty

By Carl Bloch (1834-90)

(It being Sunday I've taken the liberty to copy Bloch's painting, trusting the painter, the author and the devotely religious won't mind. Note also that the emphases in the article are mine, not the author's-- ACW) 

By Brian Easton* in Pundit. 

Are we reducing child poverty by as much as is needed to reach the targets set by the government under the Child Poverty Reduction Act? 

The current indicators about the level of poverty are not very promising, but on average they really only

apply for December 2018 (that is the middle of the July 2018 to June 2019 year, the period for which they cover). The government has introduced a number of poverty-reducing policies since, but they are not yet appearing in the data. Some of their effects will be there in the Statistics NZ release next February but we shall have to wait until February 2022 to see the effects of the first term of this Labour Government’s policies (by which time it will be almost halfway into its second term).

Nevertheless, we can make some assessment (the Treasury publish their modelled estimates). The indications are that we can expect some reduction in poverty but they will be small compared to the track required to meet the statute’s target of halving child poverty in ten years. The government is going to have to do a lot more. 

The problem is that while there is no shortage of goodwill, there has been little comprehensive and rigorous thinking. This is nicely illustrated by the 2012 Solutions to Child Poverty in New Zealand: Evidence for Action, prepared for the Children’s Commissioner by what was called an ‘Expert Advisory Group’. 

The group’s lack of expertise is evident from the report’s bibliography. Nine of them have no publications at all in it; the other two have but one each, neither of which is particularly central to poverty research. They were really a group of eminent persons of goodwill – the advisory system’s equivalent of generic managers; they could have been asked to design a flag, 

(The bibliography itself failed to cover the vast literature on New Zealand poverty research. For instance, there is no reference to the work of the  Child Poverty Action Group whose practical experience includes visiting houses of the poor. The omissions makes the ‘expert’ report look like an All Black team without a scrum.)

Because they were so unfamiliar with the research, the ‘experts’ failed to notice that child poverty doubled between 1990 and 1994. (The relevant graph is on page 5 of the advisory group’s report.) In fact the government targets are, in effect, to return us to the income distribution before Rogernomics and Ruthanasia. 

The Child Poverty Reduction Act could be called the ‘Reverse the Neoliberal Anti-inequality Approach Act’.

Source: Pundit, an online current affairs and culture blog hub—entirely Kiwi-made—offering you a smart take on what matters in New Zealand and around the world.

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* Brian Easton has degrees in mathematics and economics and is a former director of the NZ Institute of Economic Research.  He is known  for his criticism of economic orthodoxy.. In other words, he is a thinker.