Sunday, February 01, 2009

The inexorable rise in the invalid's benefit

MSD data (for Lucy);


Historical data sourced from Official Yearbooks;

1940 11,811
1950 9,476
1960 8,024
1970 8,342
1980 15,647
1990 27,824
2000 57,755

2008 83,501

There are at least a dozen reasons I have identified for this growth and there is a chapter dedicated to it in my (if it ever gets published) book. But the trend isn't confined to NZ and the OECD refers to the phenomenon of the "...medicalisation of labour market problems."

3 comments:

Lucy said...

That is interesting. Sorry I was given the wrong information of course you are right.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

No need to apologise. I am not infallible. And those numbers are fairly hard to believe, after all.

Anonymous said...

Disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful.