Main benefit rates go up to $20 today – with more to come in April – but the Child Poverty Action Group says the government’s own figures show it’s not enough.
Spokesperson Janet McAllister says yesterday’s release of the second set of official three-year child poverty targets shows the huge and complex challenge New Zealand faces.
While the Government says it’s making progress, Treasury’s own figures show the increase will only reduce one of its measures of child poverty from 18.4 per cent to 17 per cent.
"So they've put some resources in so we'll have a little bit of a reduction but we need to see (more) resources in now otherwise we will have downstream effects in terms of distress and intergenerational poverty that will be far more worrying for the community and more expensive than just putting in the resources now," Ms McAllister says.
Because income support levels have been so low, many people have been getting by on supplemental assistance – which will be clawed back from today’s increase.
Follow us on !["p_facebook"]("/site/uma/images/story_img/facebook.jpg")
& !["p_twitter"]("/site/uma/images/story_img/twitter.jpg")
Copyright © 2021, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com
