Time is right for a universal child benefit

Another year, another report. I’m tired of hearing about the curse of poverty for tens of thousands of Kiwi kids. Year after year, the number of kids doing it tough remains roughly the same: this year, the Child Poverty Monitor says it’s 13 per cent suffering material hardship, a staggering 148,000 lacking some of life’s basic needs.

No matter how posh your neighbourhood is, if you look closely, you will see child poverty around you. They’re the families in Pak’n Save checking the prices nervously before putting only a few items in their trollies. They’re at most of your children’s schools, struggling to provide the gear, healthy food and energy it takes to fully participate in school life. If you arrive at a city car park early enough, you might see some of these kids waking up in the back seat of their parents’ cars.

It’s just time to end child poverty in New Zealand. And we can.

Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft argues that, with a healthy surplus in the bank, the Government can afford to do what it takes to address child poverty with bigger, bolder moves.

The time is right for the Government to establish – like 11 other wealthy countries – the universal child benefit. Cash assistance to all families for raising kids is, in study after study, an effective way to drastically reduce child poverty.

When it was introduced in the UK in 1999, along with many other poverty-reduction policies, absolute poverty fell by more than half in the next 10 years.

A United States study found that a US$2500 per child annual benefit would reduce the number of children living in poverty from 12.2 million to 8.4m, and that a $4000 benefit would cut the number to 5.8m, more than halving it.

The economics of poverty are complex and involve factors as varied as mental health and minimum wage rates, housing costs and money management skills; there is never one magic bullet that will transform an age-old, multi-layered problem. But regular and universal cash payments to parents immediately ease the constant financial burden that most families, even middle-class ones, experience in New Zealand in some way.

If a universal child benefit were established, businesses such as shoe stores, school uniform shops, early childhood development centres and supermarkets would also reap the benefits of new cash in the system.

There’s plenty of public backing for the schemes that France, Ireland, Sweden and other countries have already adopted. In 2017, a survey asked New Zealanders if they would support or oppose a basic income payment of $60 per week to all 1.22 million Kiwi kids.

More than half (55 per cent) said they would support it and only one in five New Zealanders surveyed said no. The other respondents either weren’t sure or were neutral on the topic. And it wasn’t just people in low-income households who agreed with the idea. Sixty-two per cent of those in highincome households supported a universal child benefit.

Becroft has raised his concerns that the child poverty scourge means that tens of thousands of New Zealand children would never enjoy music lessons, sports teams, presents for birthday parties or new books. This is the stuff that childhood in New Zealand should be made of.

I want all these things and more for every kid lucky enough to live in a country that already enjoys, unlike millions of the world’s children, no war, no famine, and clean air to breathe.

Inclusion is such an important aspect of growing up; children need to feel part of a group, not outside of them.

If peer groups are kids who have healthy lunches, decent shoes and guitar lessons, our 13 per cent suffering material hardship have the added weight of not just hunger and cold, but the lasting pangs of social exclusion.

The Government has a $7.5 billion surplus this year, but about half of that is due to complicated accounting trickery regarding the way that KiwiRail is valued and the way taxes are treated on paper. So let’s call it $3.8b.

Paying a universal child benefit of $60 a week for every child up to the age of 17 – allowing all Kiwi kids except for a very few to have a decent place to rest at night, eat well, and even learn to play a musical instrument or join a sports team – would cost $3.8b.

In one single, bold stroke, we could take the biggest bite yet out of New Zealand’s child poverty problem.

The public supports a universal child benefit. It now needs political might.

As soon as next year, the 2020 Child Poverty Monitor could feature, at long last, some good news.