Maori children miss out on new Government assistance

Almost half of all Maori children will miss out on the heavily-promoted new "in-work payment" - because their parents are on benefits.

Almost one in five non-Maori children will also miss out by having parents on benefits.

Social Development Ministry figures supplied to the Child Poverty Action Group show that 93,423 Maori children and 137,857 non-Maori children still had working-aged parents on benefits last December, despite the lowest unemployment rate for more than 20 years.

They represented 45.9 per cent of all Maori children and 19.6 per cent of non-Maori children, based on Statistics NZ figures for dependent children at the 2001 census.

The in-work payment, which came into force on April 1, pays $60 a week to families with up to three children, plus an extra $15 a week for each additional dependent child.

But the money is paid only to couples who work for at least 30 hours a week, and sole parents working at least 20 hours a week, who do not receive any welfare benefits.

Child Poverty Action researcher Donna Wynd said the new payment would widen the income gap between working families and beneficiaries - and therefore between Maori and non-Maori children.

This, in turn, would widen gaps between Maori and non-Maori children in health and future success.

The Government's social policy, published in 2004, says that "poor child health is linked to poor adult health and also to broader poor outcomes including unemployment and crime".

Ms Wynd said: "the future workforce will be predominantly brown, and we need to take steps to ensure adequate investment in them now."

The vast majority of dependent children of working-aged beneficiaries - 83 per cent of the Maori children in benefit families and 75 per cent of non-Maori - are in sole parent families on the domestic purposes benefit.

A further 12 per cent of Maori, and 15 per cent of non-Maori, benefit children have parents on sickness and invalid benefits. The rest are on the dole, the widow's benefit or emergency benefit.

Dependent children are those under 18 and working less than 30 hours a week. The percentages may be over-stated because the benefit figures are four years later than the figures for the total number of dependent children, which are likely to have increased since 2001.

But they may also be under-stated because the census allowed people to choose multiple ethnicities, so the total of all ethnic groups came to 1.06 million, 14 per cent more than the number of dependent children, 930,549.

In contrast, the benefit forms provide only one box for ethnicity, so the total of 231,280 children in beneficiary families has no double-counting.

Social Development Minister David Benson-Pope said the in-work payment was designed to improve people's opportunities to work.

"The Government believes that ultimately work is the best way out of poverty and provides the best social and economic outcomes for families in the long run," he said.

National welfare spokesperson Judith Collins said children who needed help most should be targeted through parenting programmes such as Family Start and better healthcare and education, rather than extending welfare to the middle class.