New Zealanders elect a new government on Saturday after a campaign in which several parties and advocacy groups have vied with each other to push child poverty to the top of the political agenda. That this should be the case might surprise the rest of the world.
Ours is a small, prosperous country of 4.5 million people, a welfare state (albeit one made over to some extent by market forces) and an agricultural producer which sells food to the world. Yet enough children arrive at school without breakfast or lunch to warrant food programmes in schools serving the poorest areas. According to a benchmark 2012 report, many children come from homes that are cold, poorly furnished and often crowded, they lack raincoats and sturdy shoes for wet weather and largely miss out on fresh fruit and vegetables, which grow here the year round.
At last count around 280,000 children lived in households below a poverty line of 60 percent of median income adjusted for family size (an unofficial measure since we have no official one). That’s one in four children under the age of 18, with a higher rate for those under 11.
Compared with those in average and higher income homes, these children are three times as likely to get sick, and 5.6 times as likely to be hospitalised for injuries from assault, neglect or maltreatment. They are less likely to leave school with the minimum qualification for skilled employment, and are therefore more likely to remain poor and perpetuate the poverty cycle. (more...)
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