Child poverty
Poverty blights a child’s life.
Many children will slip in and out of poverty as family circumstances change. Job loss or redundancy, illness and costly medical treatment, relationship breakdown – many factors can cause temporary poverty. Most children, however, have the resilience to cope well enough with such temporary set backs.
But long term or recurrent poverty is a different story altogether. Such poverty can have serious and permanent effects on a child as it influences their physical, emotional and social development. The causes of long term poverty can be various — long term illness or disability, sole parenting, poor workforce skills may prevent parents from earning an adequate income.
But whatever the causes, one thing is certain — the child is not responsible for the poverty which is damaging their life. That’s why eliminating that poverty is a social responsibility rather than just a parental responsibility.
The social consequences of child poverty are long term and manifold. Research shows that children that grow up in poverty tend to have poorer health in adulthood, to gain fewer educational and vocational qualifications, to have higher rates of unemployment, to get into trouble with the law more often, and to die younger. In other words they tend to require greater public expenditure while contributing less to the economy.
Many people find it difficult to believe that there is child poverty in New Zealand and are amazed to learn we have one of the higher levels in the developed world.
Here are some documents and links which will provide more information on child poverty, both in New Zealand and in other developed countries, its causes and its effects on children:
Documents
- Eradicating child poverty in New Zealand - provides the case for eradicating child poverty; the current situation and recent trends; solutions that ECC advocates.
- Submission to the Welfare Working Group - ECC’s submission which urges the need for our benefit system to protect children from child poverty.
Useful links
- Child Poverty Action Group - CPAG is an independent charity working to eliminate child poverty in New Zealand by 2020. CPAG speaks out on behalf of tens of thousands of New Zealand’s poorest children whose health, education and well-being are compromised by their meagre standard of living.
- The children’s social health monitor – The Health Professionals Working Group has been monitoring the impact of economic conditions upon NZ children’s health and wellbeing since 2009. The annual report of nearly 100 pages provides detailed information.
- Child poverty in perspective: an overview of child well-being in rich countries produced by UNICEF’s Innocenti research Centre. Indicates New zealand’s ranking internationally.