MSD figures show that approximately one third (28%) of children lived in poverty in 2004, then it dropped to approximately one fifth (22%) in 2007, but the number went up to one in four again, last year.
This shows that Labour's Working for Families did help lift some families out of poverty but not the poorest, as beneficiaries could not get it. Now the economic crisis is driving families into poverty again, and National's benefit attacks will make it much worse.
Child poverty is double what it was in the eighties.. before Rogernomics began a round of attacks upon the working class.
Fifty six percent of single parents are below the poverty line. (A recent survey also estimated that 45% of single parents on a benefit have some kind of mental illness. Earlier surveys have shown that the health of single mothers is much worse than the national average for women.)
Single parents are three times as likely to be poor as the population as a whole.
Meanwhile Peter Dunne is trying to bring in Welfare for the Middle class ( for the "right kind of families") in the form of income splitting for tax purposes for married couples while doing absolutely nothing for poor single parent families..
The social contribution that mothers make at home would be recognised and supported if you are married and middle class, but not if you are single and poor.
But maybe this discriminatory practice would never happen?
See Brian Fallow's article at:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10670428
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