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.”
Pins hidden in her shoes, head forced down a toilet, kicked in the stomach: South Korean hairdresser Pyo Ye-rim suffered a litany of abuse from school bullies, but now she is speaking out. The 26-year-old is part of a phenomenon sweeping South Korea known as “Hakpok #MeToo,” where people who were bullied publicly name and shame the perpetrators of school violence — “hakpok” in Korean — decades after the alleged crimes. Made famous globally by Netflix’s gory revenge series The Glory, the movement has ensnared everyone from K-pop stars to baseball players and accusations — often anonymous — can be career-ending, with
One of Australia’s two active volcanoes on an island near Antarctica — known as Big Ben — has been spotted by satellite spewing lava. The lava flow on the uninhabited Heard Island, about 4,100km southwest of Perth and 1,500km north of Antarctica, is part of an ongoing eruption that was first noted more than a decade ago. The image was caught by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite on Thursday, and is a composite of an optical picture and an infrared image. The lava is seen flowing down the side of Big Ben from near the summit, known as Mawson Peak.
SYMBOLIC: The bill sponsored by a cross-party group of lawmakers was hailed as a ‘historic moment’ in the fight for marriage equality, but is unlikely to pass Lawmakers in South Korea have proposed the country’s first same-sex marriage bill, in a move hailed by civic groups as a defining moment in the fight for equality. The marriage equality bill, proposed by South Korean lawmaker Jang Hye-yeong of the minor opposition Justice Party and co-sponsored by 12 lawmakers across all the main parties, seeks to amend the country’s civil code to allow same-sex marriage. The bill is unlikely to pass, but forms part of a trio of bills expected to increase pressure on the government to expand the idea of family beyond traditional criteria. The two other bills relate to
TIME TO TALK: Among China’s grievances were economic and trade issues related to Taiwan, but both countries emphasized the need to maintain communication US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) on Friday raised complaints about China’s state-led economic policies during a meeting with Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao (王文濤), who objected to US tariffs and trade policies, as well as issues related to Taiwan, their offices said. However, statements from the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce emphasized the need for Washington and Beijing to maintain communication on trade. “Ambassador Tai highlighted the need to address the critical imbalances caused by China’s state-led, non-market approach to the economy and trade policy,” the USTR said in a statement released after the
RSS