International women’s day? How are the worst off mothers and their kids doing?

ByProf. Susan St. John

So today is International womens day. Before we celebrate, spare a thought for the  mothers stuck under the lowest of all povery lines.

They are doing appallingly badly and their children are not thriving.  How little we acknowledge the value of the work these mothers do looking after their children with so few resources.

 Is anyone surprised by the latest official child poverty stats? 

Here is the CPAG graph updated for the latest figures (pre-COVID) . It shows the percentages of children under the three after-housing costs poverty lines found in Government’s official targets. 

Not much to get excited about here.  Using part of child tax credits that are supposed to alleviate child poverty in order to incentivise work has helped lock 168,000 children in the red zone where they are set to stay under current policies and be joined by many thousands more as benefit numbers swell under COVID.   

Of course benefits are too low.  But practically all we hear is that  core bnefits should be raised. 

Let’s not forget the original slashing of adult benefits by Ruth Richardson in 1991 to incentivise full-time paid work was followed in 1996 by Bill Birch’s cuts to children’s tax credits. This served as a double whammy when parents were on those unliveable benefits. 

The 1996 Child Tax Credit of $15 per week per child was given only to those ‘independent of the state’. It was a lot of money back then.

The Child Tax Credit was expanded in 2006 as part of Working for Families (WFF) to become the even more discriminatory In Work Tax Credit—a child payment to alleviate poverty worth today at least $72.50 a week, more for larger families, but only for the children of the ‘deserving’.   Parents had to be both off benefits and in paid work of 20 hours for a sole parent or 30 hours for a couple. The intention was give those ‘undeserving’ parents (largely sole mothers) an incentive to get full time paid work regardless of whether disabled, sick as well as caring for their young children.

In a timid move last year, the set hours of work requirement for the In Work Tax Credit was reduced to just needing to have some paid work (as well as being off benefit). But if no more than ‘some’ paid work is a requirement how does the In Work Tax Credit operate as a work incentive exactly?  

Meaningful reform to WFF is well over-due. There is much unconscious bias and implicit racism in the current WFF. The complex system has not delivered the gains promised by work incentives or reductions in child poverty. The discrimination against children in New Zealand’s major income support programme for children is inconsistent with inclusive child poverty goal achievements and makes their poverty and the poverty of their mothers worse.

All  politicians and bureaucrats in MSD need to  please repeat 20 times over or until they get it:  benefits are for adults, Working for Families tax credits paid to the caregiver are for children. Both benefits and children’s tax credits (WFF) need to be radically improved. WFF must be made fully  inclusive  and indexed to wages. Will we be still saying the same thing next International Womens’s day?

 

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16 Comments

  1. The standard of living is guaranteed to decline, I’m afraid, because energy and food costs are rising globally. And the sociopaths that comprise the Adern government are not interested in the welfare of the populace; the welfare of banks, corporations, opportunists and politicians come first.

    1. Mother hood and parenthood are the most important jobs in NZ or anywhere, but they attract little economic support.
      Much mental illness, crime, suicide and violence, stem from struggling stressed families who get negligible support in our economy . The victims are often through inter-generational family hardship. Meanwhile vast profits are sucked out of the community by many who are wealthy, some not even living in the communities the draw excessive wealth from. For most consumed items a profit is taken. In grower based communities food and resources are shared on a need basis and contributing without fiscal profit gathering. Communities bound by collective effort often give greater support to family life. They are less divided and alone. Its the village structure that supports its member families and future hopes.

  2. Neoliberal government had to introduce the working for families as working conditions are now so dire in NZ and the wages so poor, that the government stepped in to subsidise employers so workers can survive enough to get to work. (Although many paying the least wages are making the most profits)…. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/106288425/supermarket-owners-banking-super-profits-nbr-rich-list-shows

    Scary statistic of the day. These are all the returnee’s welcome back to our shores….. so I guess we need more money for police, justice and woman’s refuge by the sounds of it to pay for the 50% increase in police call outs just to MIQ people…

    Family harm incidents in managed isolation hotels causing almost half of all police callouts
    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/03/family-harm-incidents-in-managed-isolation-hotels-causing-almost-half-of-all-police-callouts.html

    More ‘nice’ well behaved folks into 100% NeoKind NZ. And this is when they are being supervised, what happens when they get out!

  3. Neoliberal government had to introduce the working for families as working conditions are now so dire in NZ and the wages so poor, that the government stepped in to subsidise employers so workers can survive enough to get to work. (Although many paying the least wages are making the most profits)…. https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/106288425/supermarket-owners-banking-super-profits-nbr-rich-list-shows

    Scary statistic of the day. These are all the returnee’s welcome back to our shores….. so I guess we need more money for police, justice, mental health, social services and woman’s refuge by the sounds of it to pay for the 50% increase in police call outs just to MIQ people…

    Family harm incidents in managed isolation hotels causing almost half of all police callouts
    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/03/family-harm-incidents-in-managed-isolation-hotels-causing-almost-half-of-all-police-callouts.html

    Yikes. More ‘nice’ well behaved folks into 100% NeoKind NZ. And this is when they are being supervised, what happens when the perpetrators get out!

  5. You could replace our leader with a concerned looking cardboard cutout and the plight of the poor would not change. She litetally does not give a @#$%.

    1. Ok so what proportion of super-yacht owners are women?? (just kidding really begs the question)

  7. Did anyone else catch Seven Sharp tonight? Jeremy Wells wished Hilary Barry “Happy International Women’s Day”, then, when she went to enthusiastically talk about it, he cut her off and said ” there’s no need to go on about it,” leaving Hilary looking visibly upset.

    Dear Jeremy,

    When you take a cheap shot at your unsuspecting female co-host, humiliating her, all you do is remind women viewers of every white male privileged arsehole that has done the same, and why things have to change. I know you enjoy being controversial, but that wasn’t funny, it was nasty and cruel. The look on Hilary’s face said it all.
    From,
    Every woman ever.

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