KEY POINTS:
Perhaps it's a characteristic of the underclass that they don't know who they are, but when reporters visited the now famous McGehan Close in Owairaka last week in search of them, the elusive underclass seemed to be either in hiding or in denial.
In fact, residents of what John Key called "dead end" New Zealand seemed a little peeved by the National leader's label. They had jobs; they worked hard; they wanted their kids to do well. They just had a lot less money to do it with.
There was, indeed, a problem with youth crime in their street, as evidenced by the drunken teenager who approached Weekend Herald reporters. But if there was an underclass there - and at least one woman agreed there was - it certainly wasn't them.
No problem. Key paid a visit to assure the inhabitants of McGehan Close he meant no offence, and only wanted to help. He got chummy with Joan Nathan, described as a 30-something paper deliverer and invited her 12-year-old daughter, Aroha, to Waitangi with him; Nathan said she'd vote for him.
Which was nice for Key, from a public relations point of view, but had he found a card-carrying member of the underclass in Nathan? She didn't think so. She was poor, yes, but there were many people worse off, she said.
So where was this underclass - and what did it look like? Key said it could be found in places like McGehan Close, "where rungs on the ladder of opportunity have been broken".
"I'm talking about places where happy and sparkling 6- and 7-year-olds become angry and resentful 14- and 15-year-olds. I'm talking about places where there is a complete lack of hope."
But that didn't describe the hopeful Nathan at all, and her kids seemed shy rather than angry and resentful.
Clearly, it didn't describe Key either, despite growing up in a state house with a single mum who took on cleaning to supplement her benefit.
No, Key had dreamed of better things, as he rode his bicycle round Burnside, and pressed his nose against the windows of the well-off to see what he was missing out on. He hadn't envied. He had been determined to work himself out of there. He'd succeeded. All it had taken was gumption and hard work.
So clearly he was talking about a lesser class of poor - not the poor that Jesus said would always be with us.
The idea of an undesirable, ignorant class of people populating the underbelly of society and threatening its survival has been around since at least the 18th century, when English demographer Thomas Malthus warned against the over-production of the lower classes and encouraged them not to breed. A few modern-day commentators agree.
In 1989, American sociologist Charles Murray, who co-wrote The Bell Curve, warned of an emerging British underclass, identified, he said, by illegitimacy, violence and persistent unemployment. Murray argued the underclass was defined not so much by the degree of poverty as the kind of poverty. In other words, you had to be a particular kind of poor person to qualify.
Which is what worried some social scientists. The "underclass", as coined in the 1980s in the US, described an excluded minority defined not just by their poverty, but also by their behaviour and values. And if that was so, then the members of the underclass had only themselves to blame for their plight.
It was their poor moral choices and the perverse incentives of the welfare system that were responsible for their sorry state - and not the structural forces that may have propelled them there in the first place. That's why work-for-dole programmes were needed; why benefits had to be unattractively low.
Christopher Jencks, professor of social policy at Harvard's School of Government, wrote that the term had focused "attention on the basement of the American social system (those 'under' the rest of us), without specifying what the inhabitants in this dark region have in common". Clearly it meant "something more than just persistent poverty".
"The term underclass, with its echoes of the underworld, conjures up sin, or at least unorthodox behaviour. Low income may be a necessary condition for membership in such a class, but it is not sufficient." In which case, it's probably not very helpful.
We might as well talk about that other phenomenon - the "overclass" or elite, who practise a more socially acceptable form of exclusion from behind their security-locked gates. Could any kid from the poor end of town hope to peek through their windows without getting arrested these days?
Still, good on John Key for recognising the rungs have fallen off the ladder of opportunity for some people - even if he seems to have no idea how it happened, or how to fix them.
Which brings us back to McGehan Close and another wealthy man who's a regular visitor here. Scott Gilmour sponsors the I Have A Dream programme, which has been mentoring, tutoring and "enriching" 53 children from this area since 2003.
Aroha is one of those children, and if she sticks with the programme, Gilmour has promised to pay her way through university or tech, as he has promised to do for all 53 Dreamers.
In some ways, Gilmour is a lot like John Key. He talks about growing up in a family where he was expected to go to university, and where his parents believed in him.
And he worries, as Key seems to, about educational gaps between children of the wealthy and children of the poor. But he doesn't think of these kids as belonging to an underclass, just lacking resources and opportunities. And he thinks of his ordinary upbringing as privileged.
Maybe they should talk.
