An evidence brief prepared for Oranga Tamariki and published in April 2021 contains some fascinating data.
Of those individuals born 1993-97, by age 17 two percent had contact with Youth Justice and Care and Protection services (YJ & CP). You can work the rest out from there.
The next set of data from those born 1997-2002 ( slightly later than the first cohort) shows the association with benefits at age 17:
Looking at the YJ & CP group, 19% had already received their own benefit: in the past year 23% had a parent who'd received Jobseeker; 20% a parent on sole parent support and 8% with a parent receiving suported living payment.
That totals to 70 percent. (It's feasible one parent received both types of benefit in the same year leading to an overcount but the paper doesn't spell out any overlap).
Nevertheless, comparing apples with apples, for those 17 year-olds who had never been involved with Care and Protection or Youth Justice the equivalent number was just 13 percent.
The link between long-term benefit dependence and appearing in the Care and Protection and/or Youth Justice systems is very strong.
On Thursday last week the government effectively sent a message that it's fine to be on a benefit and keep having kids. They passed a law to undo prior attempts to discourage this, known as the 'subsequent child policy' - put simply, a rule that stopped people avoiding work obligations by having more babies.
Why has the government done this?
Here's Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni:
The subsequent child policy has a disproportionate effect on Māori women. By removing the policy, we can further our commitment to improving outcomes for Māori and valuing the role of carers, who are predominantly women.
Maori make up 56% of the people adding children to a benefit.
Bearing that in mind here is another graph from the brief (cohort 1993-97). Note the coincidence/correlation in the YJ & CP group.
Babies born onto welfare stay there the longest. According to MSD research:
"Bivariate analysis of factors associated with long benefit durations highlights having first contact with the benefit system at birth; living with a sole caregiver at first contact; and first appearing with a primary beneficiary who was female, Maori or aged under 20."
Yet this Labour government has just given a green light to the very circumstances that set children up to fail.
Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator. Her articles and reports have been widely published. She mentored beneficiary families during the 2000s and more recently worked as a volunteer at Rimutaka prison teaching English as a second language.
Nothing will change as long as we have a total looser like John Tamahere and his ilk advising the tribes that nothing in life is their fault, including their low vaxination rate, prison ocupancy etc etc as its al the fault of the whiteys who possibly saved them from extincion during their tribale wars
Tony
If I was Maori or Pacifica I'd have 14 kids like my great granpa & ma did.
Just so that I could come here and taunt.
Why hasnt a New Zealand politician stood up and pronounced a sensible solution/ policy similar to what the Spanish Governerment advocate. Parents are permitted 2 children with Beneficial government assistance up to 3 years of age then discontinued If Parents wish for a third child then they pay for their total welfare -- Guess what , All children are well fed, Educated, loved and wanted.
Typically there is no gain without some short term pain. Failing to discourage the destructive elements of Maori culture and tribalism, such as having unaffordable babies on the benefit, achieves nothing other than helping to seal the fate of those identifying with that people as remaining at the bottom of the heap.
The disparity between children who identify as Māori and/or Pacific who had contact with Youth Justice is informative.
· 53% identify as Māori
· 9% identify as Pacific
· 5% identify as Māori & Pacific
Māori children are over half the contacts with Youth Justice and Pacific children represent about one tenth of contacts with Youth Justice. This is completely disproportionate to the proportion of Māori and Pacific people in New Zealand.
Statistics New Zealand report 16.7 percent of the population identified with Māori ethnicity in 2018; and 8.3 percent identified with a Pacific ethnicity.
The key question that is never asked, is why is there such a difference between Māori and Pacific people? Social economic status, appearance and names,…