KEY POINTS:
Work would not be worth doing for Karla Karaitiana if it were not for the $60 a week that taxpayers pay her to top up her wages.
The $60 "in-work tax credit", which she gets on top of the basic $82-a-week family tax credit for her son Rawiri, 7, makes her about $50 better off in work than she would be on the domestic purposes benefit (DPB).
"If it wasn't for the tax credit, I'd be no better off working," she said.
Ms Karaitiana, 28, who was on the DPB until she got a $14-an-hour job as the medical receptionist at the Wellington People's Centre in January, is exactly the kind of person for whom the Government created the in-work credit in its Working for Families package in April 2005.
The evidence is that it has succeeded in enticing sole parents such as her into work.
Numbers on the DPB have dropped by almost 10,000, from 105,682 in March 2005 to 95,861 in March this year.
But Ms Karaitiana will lose the in-work credit when she stops working, which she will have to do in four months time when she has a new baby.
"Seeing that I'm going to end up on my own with two kids, it really terrifies me," she said. "I was struggling to eat before I started working. However, I have mixed feelings about it because I do feel that you make a lot of sacrifices to do the work thing. So I agree on both sides."
Ms Karaitiana said she could see the value of the in-work credit to pay for her transport to work and Rawiri's after-school care, but she also supports the Child Poverty Action Group's attempt to get the credit for families forced to live on benefits too.
"I think there needs to be an increase in assistance, if we are at home, so that we are not having to grovel and beg to make ends meet, and if we need to be out there working, there needs to be a greater incentive for that as well."
Ms Karaitiana rents a two-bedroom flat in Wellington and will not be getting any support from the father of her baby-to-be.
The pregnancy came about in "not very nice circumstances", she said.
She has friends in similar circumstances who "really weigh up whether it's worth working or not".
