Cutting Benefits For 18 And 19-Year-Olds Will Cause More Hardship For Young People, Warns CPAG

The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) is calling on the Government to reverse the latest welfare law change stripping unemployment benefits from thousands of 18 and 19-year-olds which they say will deepen hardship for young people.

From November 2026, 18 and 19-year-olds will be denied Jobseeker Support if their parents earn more than $67,225 combined. An estimated 4,300 young people are expected to lose eligibility for support.

CPAG Chief Executive Lyn Amos says the policy punishes young people for a lack of jobs, not a lack of effort.

“Youth unemployment is nearly 15 percent and higher again for young people with disabilities. Jobs are hard to find right now, and this law doesn’t change that. It just removes the safety net from under young people while they look,” Ms Amos says.

“This isn’t about parents ‘stepping up.’ The families affected have lost the Family Tax Credit for these young people who are no longer counted as dependents – yet they’re still expected to fully support unemployed 18 and 19-year-olds. Younger children in these households will feel that squeeze first.”

Earlier this year, it was an OIA request from CPAG which revealed the Prime Minister’s office had no evidence on file that jobs were even available for 18 and 19-year-olds, despite his repeated statements suggesting there were.

CPAG’s newly released Manifesto to Reduce Child Poverty , written by 11 researchers across incomes, housing, health, disability and education, specifically calls for this policy to be reversed.

One of the Manifesto’s authors, Auckland University economist Susan St John, says this change that treats young adults as dependent children is supposed to “reduce benefit dependency and encourage people into work, but in practice it swaps one dependency for another, with no analysis of its potentially harmful effects.”

“Young people don’t choose to be unemployed in a recession. What they need is support to find secure work and further education – not to be told the taxpayer owes them nothing because of what their parents earn.”

CPAG says the change will push more families into poverty and deepen their hardship and comes as the country continues to miss its statutory child poverty reduction targets.

The Manifesto calls for all 18 and 19-year-olds to retain access to a benefit if they need one, alongside a wider package of reforms to Working for Families, benefit abatement rates, and student loan repayment thresholds, to lift children and young people out of poverty.

Notes:

– CPAG is an independent charity that has researched and advocated on child poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand for 32 years.

– The Manifesto for Child Poverty Reduction (August 2026) and an executive summary are available at A Manifesto to Reduce Child Poverty (2026) – Child Poverty Action Group (https://www.cpag.org.nz/our-campaigns/a-manifesto-to-reduce-child-poverty-2026).

– CPAG’s Policy Briefs are at https://www.cpag.org.nz/policy-briefs.

– Key figures: 169,300 children (14.3%) in material hardship in the year ended June 2025 (StatsNZ), up 47,500 since 2022; the legislated 2028 target is 6%. Child poverty is estimated to cost 3-4.5% of GDP a year ($13.5-18 billion).