Mishap means child poverty rates wiped

WELLINGTON: Child poverty rates for the past two years have been wiped because of a survey mishap, just as targets for reducing the rates are about to become law.

The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) has decided not to publish child poverty rates for 2016 or 2017, saying there appear to have been unusually low response rates by lowincome households with children, which have skewed the results.

The decision comes as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s signature Child Poverty Reduction Bill, which requires the Government to set targets to reduce the child poverty rate, passed its second reading in Parliament yesterday.

The Bill has been endorsed by the National Party, making it certain to pass into law.

Family First director Bob McCoskrie, who revealed the ministry’s decision not to publish the latest statistics yesterday, said the statistical uncertainty made the targets ‘‘meaningless’’.

‘‘We are trying to solve a problem that we are struggling to define,’’ he said.

The MSD’s annual household income reports show the proportion of children living in households earning below half the median household income per person after housing costs doubled from 12% in 1986 to a peak of 24% in 2001, and then declined only slightly to 21% in 2015.

Raw data from Stats NZ household surveys show that this child poverty rate dropped to about 19% in 2016 and 2017 — apparently lifting about 20,000 children out of poverty.

Ms Ardern’s target is to reduce this child poverty rate by 4 percentage points — about 40,000 children — by 202021.

A spokeswoman for Ms Ardern said calculating the reduction would be based on data for the year to June 2018, which is due to be released next February in the first of a series of annual child poverty reports required under the new law.

The new reports will be published by Stats NZ, not the MSD.

The MSD said the apparent undercount of lowincome families in the 2016 and 2017 surveys was due to including only 3500 households in the surveys.

Stats NZ has been given extra funding to expand the sample size to 20,000 households from July this year.

‘‘Our child poverty reduction programme is on track with crossparty support,’’ Ms Ardern’s spokeswoman said.

‘‘Under the Bill, the Government will use child poverty rates published early next year as the benchmark for progress on child poverty reduction.

‘‘These will be based on improved data methodology published by Stats NZ.’’

Children’s Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft, whose office publishes an annual Child Poverty Monitor, said there was ‘‘no question that poverty continues to be a persistently harsh reality for too many young New Zealanders’’.

‘‘The indicators we have followed in recent years show little sign of a significant increase or decrease,’’ he said.

‘‘While we are, of course, disappointed and concerned at the lack of statistics being released this year, we look forward to robust and comprehensive figures from the Government in the future.’’ — NZME