The number of people living in extreme poverty is set to fall to the lowest on record, according to the World Bank.

Some Kiwis have been living on $2.25 of food and drink a day this week to experience Third World poverty. Andrew Laxon decided to join them.

The idea of Serco being responsible for a pipeline guiding children through their lives from cradle to grave - from CYF to prison - sounds like something from a dystopian novel, writes Richard Wagstaff.

It is extremely difficult to improve peoples' behaviour towards the environment, when their basic needs are not being met, writes Sam Judd.

The Government's 2015 Budget had at its centerpiece a push towards "compassionate conservatism", writes Michael Timmins. While more compassion is indeed welcome, the end result is mere tokenism.

Fixing child abuse and neglect is all about building relationships with families in need, social workers say.

Wherever you draw the line, too many children are going without, writes Brian Fallow.

Why don't Auckland councillors jump on a bus and take a study trip south to the People's Project's Garden Place headquarters in Hamilton, asks Brian Rudman.

I'd like to see the Conservation Minister visit the sub-Antarctic region, perhaps for her Christmas holidays, writes Paul Charman.

Forget the hikoi and library training, the answer the council needs is in Utah - and it's quite straightforward, writes Brian Rudman.

For one 17-year-old living rough on West Auckland streets, snuggling up to her boyfriend was the one way she kept warm at night.

Meridian Energy has joined with charity KidsCan to raise awareness of child poverty in NZ and help to provide food, clothing and basic healthcare.

Mills Lane at the back of the Herald building has offered the unmistakable stink of urine and a ledge of ramshackle cardboard beds where some of the city's homeless sleep.

Vicki Carpenter asks what the boards of two dilapidated schools have been doing about basic maintenance.

Assistant professor of finance Noah Smith believes the economic doomsayers are jumping the gun.

Record numbers of people are sleeping rough or in cars as Auckland's desperate housing shortage makes life harder than ever for those at the bottom.

Trailblazing legal crusader Dame Silvia Cartwright speaks candidly to David Fisher about longer jail sentences, child poverty and the strain of being Governor-General.

You'd be surprised just how hard it is to find a family willing to let a Herald writer snoop around their home and ask all sorts of intrusive questions about their substandard living conditions, writes Peter Calder.

"It makes me feel happy." Darcy Rakete, the poster boy for the Jammies in June fundraiser, is glad to help others less fortunate than him.

Broadcaster Wendy Petrie has joined the campaign to get warm pyjamas on needy kids this winter.

Not only will the benefit boost do little to alleviate poverty, but it is accompanied by cuts to other associated benefits and payments, writes Dita De Boni

The Government recognised in last week's Budget that the gap between market and benefit incomes has become too wide.

Child poverty figures can be hard to believe. The very word poverty hardly seems appropriate for a country with New Zealand's welfare net.

Could business have expected more from a Budget labelled by Finance Minister Bill English as "a plan that's working"?

After some confusion about Whanau Ora, Dita De Boni visited a provider to better understand the initiative.

Finance Minister Bill English says there will be no new initiatives to address poverty in tomorrow's Budget New Zealand - despite the Prime Minister suggesting otherwise last month.

The petition comes as the Salvation Army said it fed 9.5 per cent more people last year in its Midland region than it did in the year before.

The house where Freddie Gray's life changed forever sits at the end of a long line of abandoned row homes in one of this city's poorest neighbourhoods.

Returning home to New Zealand after more than 10 years away I find a country both hearteningly buoyant and unsettlingly fragile. Let me explain - the view of one returning son.