Low incomes the problem, not family size
In debate about child poverty, blame has been laid once again on parents having too many children, or starting a family before they can afford to. Act party candidates for this year’s general election have argued that people should not have children until a point at which they have an unquantified amount to support them. Are we really saying that those on low incomes should not have the right to have a family?
We now have fewer and fewer people having children, and those who do tend to have smaller families than was the norm a generation ago. Is it unreasonable to expect to have a child, or more than one, and be able to get by in Aotearoa New Zealand, a comparatively well-off place?
Child Poverty Action Group have as their mandate research and advocacy to reduce child poverty and would no doubt promote reductions in family sizes if that really was a key driver, or people waiting to start a family when they reach a certain income or savings target. But they don’t.
What the Act argument seems to boil down to is pretending you know more about someone else’s life than they do.
There are many reasons why people have children (or indeed no children). For some it is a planned commitment, for others the result of luck. Maybe they always imagined being part of a big family, like they had growing up. Perhaps they had the financial resources to support that child at the time of conception, or saw a child as a chance to add love and hope to the world. There are many reasons people become parents, or grow their families, that are theirs and not yours or mine.
Stating bluntly “if you can’t feed them then don’t breed” requires a series of unhelpful assumptions, including that people’s financial situations don’t change over time, or at least don’t get worse. In an age of uncertainty around employment and the future of work, this is a naive assumption. In decades gone by how many people, young women in particular, took typing at school before we saw the rise of the personal computer and the demise of the typing pool?
It is equally impossible for someone to accurately foresee how much each child will add to their outgoings. Will this child have additional health needs, a disability, or be one of twins? Will we have to move to different housing because of needs this child has, housing that is more expensive and creates more transport expenses too?
Not all children are planned at the point of conception. Contraception does fail, and is not easily available and socially acceptable for all.
In New Zealand abortions are legally allowed only for medical risk to the physical or mental health of the pregnant person, not for economic reasons. Those advocating the termination of pregnancies which may put financial pressure on a parent should think carefully, not least because abortion on such grounds is against the law.
The key driver of child poverty is not too many children but too little money; and low incomes, whether from paid employment or social welfare or a combination of both.
Not so long ago most people in this country could expect a reasonable standard of living for their family based on the income of one fulltime worker, even with three or more children in the household. In 2012 the Herald published statistics on median income levels across Auckland.
The area I live in and represent, Puketapapa (Mt Roskill), had the 18th lowest median income in the Herald’s stats, despite having a lower percentage of people on benefits (10.5%) than many of the suburbs higher up. This gap is not about individuals’ choices, it is about a system that distributes wealth in a way that is wrong. We simply must lift incomes. We do that by investing in education, in infrastructure, in social welfare, in job creation, in innovation, in pay equity and, crucially, paying at least a living wage. Focusing on procreation is a distraction, not a solution.