Little change in NZ child poverty

THERE has been little annual change in the number of New Zealand children living in poverty across most measures, but there has been a drop in the number of families struggling to provide the basics.

Stats NZ has just released the latest official child poverty figures, for the year ended June 2020.

The numbers come from the household economic survey, which had to stop collecting data when the country went into lockdown.

That means they provide a picture of child poverty before the Covid19 pandemic.

All nine child poverty measures showed downward trends compared with two years ago.

However, yearonyear, the changes are less significant on some measures.

While material hardship measures — the ability of families to provide essentials, such as shoes, or the ability to pay for doctor’s visits — decreased compared with 2019, lowincome measures were relatively unchanged.

One in nine children were living in material hardship, down from one in eight a year earlier.

In the year ended June 2020, about one in seven children lived in households with less than 50% of the median equivalised disposable income before housing costs, or 14.6%, down slightly on the one in six reported in 2018, or 16.5%.

On the afterhousing costs measure, 18.2% of children were living in poverty in 2020, compared to 22.8% in 2018.

The data showed that poverty rates for Maori and Pacific children were higher across almost all measures, compared with all children.

For the year ended June 2020, almost one in five Maori children lived in households experiencing material hardship, and for Pacific children this was one in four.

Maori children made up nearly half of the annual fall in the number of children in material hardship. The rates, across all other measures, remained relatively unchanged from June 2019.

For the first time, Stats NZ has also been able to report statistics for households with disabled people.

They show that disabled children and children in households where someone is disabled are more likely to be in poverty.

Nearly one in five disabled children lived in material hardship, more than double the rate of nondisabled children.

When Jacinda Ardern came to power in 2017, she made lifting thousands of children out of poverty one of the key priorities of her prime ministership.

Figures for the year ended June 2019, showed some improvement in child poverty rates across seven of the nine measures, though Stats NZ said it was not statistically significant.

Despite that, before the pandemic, the Government looked on track to hit its three and 10year targets.

Children’s commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft said the downward trend in child poverty rates was good news, but more action was needed.

‘‘If we’re going to really hit child poverty on the head, we will need to have sustained, continuous, bold and ongoing packages and commitment,’’ Judge Becroft said. ‘‘It can’t be oneoff. It can’t be tinkering around the edges,’’ he said.

Since the pandemic, the number of people on benefits has increased, more people have needed food grants from Work and Income and the social housing waiting list has ballooned.

Judge Becroft said that was a concern.

Child Poverty Action Group spokeswoman Janet McAllister said the number of disabled children living in material hardship was particularly concerning — one in five, according to the statistics.

‘‘That’s because the income support here doesn’t acknowledge properly the increased expenses that go with having to live with a disability.’’

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said progress was being made.

‘‘The fact that there is any child in poverty should be distressing for all of us, but what we’ve done is set ourselves ambitious goals to reduce child poverty,’’ Ms Ardern said.

‘‘What this shows is that one of the goals we’ve achieved before we were even due to, the rest we need to keep making progress, but the fact that it’s trending down across all measures is something I want to see continue.’’

She said there was ‘‘no question’’ there was more work to be done, particularly for Maori and Pasifika children.

Maori Party coleader Debbie NgarewaPacker said the figures showed this was no cause for celebration or congratulations, and the Government was ‘‘not doing enough’’ to pull Maori children out of poverty.

Green Party coleader Marama Davidson said it was ‘‘simply not good enough’’ that Maori, Pasifika and disabled children were being left behind.

Act New Zealand leader David Seymour said material hardship was not reducing at a rate that would achieve the Government’s target of halving child poverty by 2028.

❛ If we’re going to really hit child poverty on the head, we will need to have sustained, continuous, bold and ongoing packages and commitment