New Zealand’s child poverty rates have plateaued, despite government efforts and former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern making it a central priority of her time in office.
Reducing the country’s child poverty rates has been a central commitment of the Labour government since Ardern ran on the issue in 2017, creating a new minister for child poverty, introducing legislation to ensure child poverty data were measured and published yearly, and bringing in a series of additional financial support packages for low-income families.
While the situation has improved for some children since then, in the 12 months to June last year, New Zealand’s primary measures were unchanged from the previous 12 months, with 12 percent of children living in households that had less than 50 percent of the median household income before housing costs and 15 percent after housing costs.
Photo: AFP
There were 10.3 percent living in material hardship — defined as frequently being without basic essentials such as nutritious food, clothing and doctors’ visits.
The child poverty measures for Maori and Pacific island children were unchanged from the previous 12 months.
Over the longer term, the picture was more positive. Eight of the nine measures of child poverty had statistically significant decreases since June 2018, the baseline year.
The government has framed the plateauing of child poverty reduction as “encouraging” given that inflation is at about 7.2 percent and the economic disruption of restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a challenging environment, but child poverty figures staying steady this year is encouraging,” said Jan Tinetti, who replaced Ardern as child poverty reduction minister after her resignation. “It shows the government’s policies targeting kids and families are helping, despite the pandemic and tough economic times.”
However, other political parties have decried the lack of progress.
“It’s not good enough for the government just to say that they care — people need action and results,” National Party spokeswoman Louise Upston said. “The Labour government has delivered a public-housing waitlist that has skyrocketed up from 5,000 to 24,000 since 2017, 3,000 children waking up in motels every day, and an estimated one in five children growing up in benefit-dependent homes.”
“Poverty is a political choice,” Greens spokesman Ricardo Menendez March said. “The tools to lift every family and child out of poverty exist, the government just needs to use them.”
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
VENEZUELAN ACTION: Marco Rubio said that previous US interdiction efforts have not stemmed the flow of illicit drugs into the US and that ‘blowing them up’ would US President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified a lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the US to send a message to Latin American cartels. Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said that the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US. “There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while hosting Polish President
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in an apartment in northern France, triggering panic when she was spotted roaming nearby rooftops. The pair were were handed suspended jail sentences on Thursday for illegally keeping a wild animal, despite protesting that they saw Louise as their baby. The ruling follows a September 2019 incident when the months-old feline was seen roaming a rooftop in Armentieres after slipping out of the couple’s window. Authorities captured the panther by sedating her with anesthetic darts after she entered a home. No injuries were reported during the animal’s time on the loose. The court in the
RSS