Editorial: Help for our poorest citizens

Dr. Russell Wills.

A suggestion by the Children's Commissioner that New Zealanders should shift support from middle-income families to the country's poorest children is likely to spur a backlash from some quarters.

Russell Wills, a Hawke's Bay paediatrician, has issued the first of what he plans will be an annual update on trends in child poverty and poverty-related illnesses. The update shows child poverty roughly doubled in the early 1990s and has fallen little since, and child hospitalisations with poverty-related illnesses rose and fell in parallel with poverty and have risen again since the global recession hit in 2007 to a record high last year.

The poorest tenth of infants are 10 times more likely than the richest tenth to be hospitalised with bronchiolitis.

An expert group appointed by the Children's Commissioner recommends raising the maximum family tax credit for children under 15 from $92.73 to $101.98, and then gradually raise the tax credit further for children under 5.

The advocacy group says the money required could be found by changing the income thresholds and abatement rates for the in-work tax credit, which currently gives tax credits to working families earning up to $89,500 a year with two children or $124,700 with four children.

This would mean some people would lose entitlements and that money would go to children at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.

Those in receipt of these entitlements would no doubt be concerned if such a shift in government policy occurred but any such protest should be kept in perspective.

At its core, the welfare state is there to protect and support the most vulnerable in society.

If this is its aim, then surely resources should be channelled into tacking issues such as child poverty rather than propping up middle income families.