Tuesday, September 30, 2014

CPAG's cherry-picking

The Child Poverty Action Group has a new report out. Here's a statistic from it, the only 'poor children' number that appears:



Data from MSD (Perry, 2014, p. 135) shows that the number of children living in households earning less than 40% of the median income after housing costs has increased by 20,000 since 2010 to 135,000 (13% of all children)

This is the table referred to:



Table F.5
Numbers of poor children in New Zealand
(ie  the number of children in households with incomes below the selected thresholds)

BHC
AHC

BHC ‘moving line’
AHC ‘moving line’
AHC ‘anchored line (2007)’ 
HES year
50%
60%
40%
50%
60%
60% (07 ref)
2001
120,000
250,000
115,000
215,000
310,000
380,000
2004
150,000
270,000
115,000
200,000
290,000
320,000
2007
140,000
210,000
115,000
170,000
240,000
240,000
2009
115,000
210,000
130,000
195,000
270,000
230,000
2010
150,000
245,000
115,000
200,000
300,000
260,000
2011
140,000
230,000
120,000
210,000
285,000
255,000
2012
130,000
220,000
130,000
205,000
285,000
240,000
2013
120,000
215,000
135,000
205,000
260,000
230,000

At the risk of being flippant, lucky for them one of the numbers was increasing. Otherwise their narrative would be spoiled.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile David Cameron & George Osbourne show how it really can be done: no nominal benefit increases or pay rises for civil servants til at least 2017, more likely 2020 - i.e. cuts in real terms.

Meanwhile Key & co keep shoving benefits up every year.