Time for a new deal on benefits

Why are so many kids born into dependency?

Much of the country is focused on child abuse, poverty, and putting kids’ needs first. The Left says Government should just spend a few dollars more, as they’ve said for decades.

Yet the current Government taxes and spends $80 billion a year. This surpasses the wildest dreams of the welfare state’s architects. When Michael Joseph Savage departed office, government spent, in today’s money, only about $2700 a person a year. Now it’s $17,000 per person.

Just two per cent of working-age Kiwis received benefits in the decades following Savage’s reforms. Now it’s 10 per cent, and welfare spending is the biggest item of government expenditure. So how can we still have child poverty and neglect?

Lindsay Mitchell has made ending poverty her passion. The most staggering statistic she’s given lately is that one in five children are born into benefitdependent households.

You might think that if you’re on a benefit it’s a bad time to bring a child into the world. You’re probably like many other New Zealanders who think it proper to wait, save and sacrifice before having children, in a comfortable environment, then stop when you feel your family is at a size you can support.

Chances are you don’t begrudge taxpayer support for people who fall on hard times, need to escape abuse or other bad situations, but here is the interesting thing: being on a benefit seems to make you more likely to have children.

Only 10 per cent of working-age people are on a benefit, yet 20 per cent of children are born into families receiving benefits. In the six months to March 2015, 6000 babies were added to existing benefits. That’s enough to raise the hackles of those paying tax while preparing to have their own family, but worse is the outcomes for the kids involved.

Benefits seem to make people have kids early, a key risk factor for maltreatment. Research has found of under-fives who faced maltreatment, 83 per cent were on benefits before age two.

It’s simply not good enough that the Government taxes some people, who are often sacrificing for parenthood, so that it can pay others to have kids earlier. It’s absolutely unacceptable when we know this policy is enlarging child poverty and abuse. We need to put children first.

If you’re 18 or younger, you can’t get an all-cash benefit from the Government. Instead it pays rent, power, and basic necessities before giving entitlement in cash. A compassionate Government should attack child poverty by extending income management to any parent who has additional children while on a benefit.

If you want to have children while receiving a benefit that’s fine, but the Government will give entitlements in a form that puts the needs of the children first.