Saturday, December 28, 2013

Forecast welfare spending

Governments come and go with ambitious reform ideas and plans.  Treasury just keeps on forecasting numbers and expenditures seemingly regardless of those policy changes. The depressing thing is, if you were going to put money on who has the most reliable crystal ball, it'd have to go on Treasury. That's what history shows anyway.








Table 6.2 - Welfare benefit expenses (continued)
Beneficiary numbers
(Thousands)
2009
Actual
2010
Actual
2011
Actual
2012
Actual
2013
Actual
2014
Forecast
2015
Forecast
2016
Forecast
2017
Forecast
2018
Forecast
New Zealand Superannuation 522 540 561 585 612 640 667 692 716 739
Jobseeker Support and Emergency Benefit1 ..  ..  ..  ..  ..  138 132 127 125 125
Supported living payment1 ..  ..  ..  ..  ..  96 96 95 94 94
Sole parent support1 ..  ..  ..  ..  ..  79 77 77 77 77
Domestic Purposes Benefit1 101 110 114 114 109 ..  ..  ..  ..  .. 
Invalid's Benefit1 86 88 88 87 87 ..  ..  ..  ..  .. 
Sickness Benefit1 50 58 60 60 60 ..  ..  ..  ..  .. 
Unemployment Benefit1 48 78 80 73 67 ..  ..  ..  ..  .. 
Accommodation Supplement 267 312 320 311 305 297 296 294 296 299

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well done Lindsay. I'll take that graph as admission of things I've been saying for years:

- the current government's benefit "reforms" are nothing more than a cynical exercise in renaming the benefits

- the biggest welfare benefit is the Super

- In spite of its rhetoric, John Key's government is actually to the left of Helen Clark's government.