Sunday, May 01, 2016

Benefit babies at greatest risk

Following up from my previous post, "Intrigued" left a link at Whale Oil saying that the benefit baby statistics correlate strongly with geographic areas for the greatest child risk. He referred to Treasury work. (Follow the link for a further breakdown of the Auckland region.)

Compare my graph to the Treasury's below:



Here is the comment left at Whale Oil in full. Interesting:

"For anyone who has an interest in this area there is now access to useful data via the Integrated Data Infrastructure - a joint project between various departments - Corrections, Health, CYF, W&I and Stats NZ to map where the children at most risk are in NZ. It is no surprise that the areas with the highest welfare dependency (as per Lindsay Mitchell's analysis above) also show areas with the most at risk children. If anyone is interested in seeing the information that is now available and an interactive map of NZ, go to https://shinyapps.stats.govt.n...
And http://www.treasury.govt.nz/pu... A lot of the work being done by MSD on the overhaul of CYF integrates this information and it is a credit to this Government (in my opinion) that they are looking at the real cost to the State over the lifetime of a child born into a family with the identified risk factors (there are 4 key risk indicators) with the aim of investing in social welfare programmes that will (hopefully) mitigate against the perpetual cycle of welfare dependency, child abuse, crime etc and all the worst outcomes for children. It will be interesting to see how it all manifests in the next iteration of CYF but I sincerely hope it works as there are significant problems for tens of thousands of children in NZ. I think it's our best hope yet from what I have seen. After working in this field for nearly 2 decades I can assure you I've seen nothing from the left of the political spectrum or the CPAGs of this world to really come up with a solution for the real "child poverty" in NZ in all its ugly forms - other than use the term as a political club to try and score political points. I've been to the CPAG annual Budget Breakfast analyses in past years and yearned for a shred of common sense or practical and workable solutions from them and come away disillusioned and angry at their ideological grandstanding."

1 comment:

JC said...

When you look at those figures and the lifetime costs of beneficiaries and refugees of maybe $1 million per person there is a hollow laugh from thousands of New Zealanders.

I'm referring to those people who are struck down by diseases that last for decades of adult life and prohibit work. In 2010 the Australian MS Society calculated that the cost of MS per family was $A33,000 per year in costs of health, informal care and wages forgone.. thats up to nearly a $A 1 million over a working lifetime that isn't state supported. Conversely if you get a long term non work related accident ACC here will pay you a high proportion of your normal wage.

In truth it's not unreasonable that such bad luck for those afflicted by disease are not compensated and the burden falls on the family.. but how then do we justify paying the indolent, the accident victims and refugees so generously?

JC