Tauranga principal Jan Tinetti never asks kids at her decile one school what they got for their birthday, "because more than often they don't get anything."
In outgoing Children's Commissioner Dr Russell Wills' latest annual Child Poverty Monitor, out today, he said children living in households earning below 60 per cent of the median household income after housing costs, have almost doubled from 15 per cent of all children in 1984 to 29 per cent last year.
Children hospitalised with poverty-related illnesses more than doubled in the 1990s and have increased further in the recent recession.
Jan Tinetti, principal of Merivale School, said she welcomed the report which showed a third of children were living in poverty, but said she was sick of seeing no response from central government.
"At school we're seeing more and more families in increasingly desperate situations and this takes an enormous toll on kids. It doesn't take much for them to explode."
