One of Aotearoa’s leading child health advocates is warning that entrenched poverty is not simply an economic or social problem — it is showing up in the health of our tamariki, with the consequences capable of following children throughout their lives.
Professor Emeritus Innes Asher, a leading paediatric respiratory specialist and long-time campaigner for child wellbeing, has spent decades highlighting the relationship between poverty, housing and preventable childhood illness.
Her central kaupapa is that every child should have the opportunity to reach their potential regardless of the household, community or economic circumstances into which they are born.
That principle becomes increasingly difficult to deliver when children grow up in households struggling to afford the basics.
Poverty eventually reaches the hospital
The consequences of hardship do not stop at the household budget.
When families cannot consistently afford warm and healthy housing, nutritious kai, heating, transport or timely healthcare, those economic pressures can become health pressures.
For paediatric specialists such as Asher, that means poverty can eventually present itself through children requiring medical care.
Respiratory illness is particularly important because housing conditions, dampness, mould, overcrowding and the ability to adequately heat a home can all influence children’s respiratory health.
The result is a cycle where social and economic disadvantage can contribute to poorer health, while illness itself creates additional pressures for families through time away from school and work and the costs associated with accessing care.
Māori children carry an unequal burden
For Radio Waatea, the issue carries particular importance because poverty and poor housing do not fall evenly across the population.
Where Māori whānau experience greater economic hardship, housing insecurity and barriers to healthcare, tamariki Māori can also face greater exposure to the conditions associated with preventable illness.
That means reducing disparities in child health requires looking beyond hospitals and doctors.
The conditions surrounding a child — their whare, household income, access to kai, education, transport and ability to receive healthcare — all contribute to their wellbeing.
For Māori, solutions also need to recognise whānau and community circumstances rather than treating the health of an individual child in isolation.
Child poverty is a health policy
The wider message from child health advocates is that decisions made in Budgets and social policy can ultimately become health decisions.
Changes affecting household incomes, benefits, housing support and access to essential services can influence the conditions children experience every day.
Conversely, investment that improves housing quality, lifts family incomes and enables earlier access to healthcare can potentially prevent illness before a child reaches a hospital.
That shifts the discussion about poverty away from whether families should simply manage their money differently.
For health professionals, the question is what conditions Aotearoa creates for children to grow, learn and remain healthy.
The cost can last a lifetime
Poor health during childhood can have consequences well beyond the immediate illness.
Children repeatedly missing kura because they are sick can lose valuable learning time. Chronic illness can affect physical development and participation in sport and community life, while pressure on parents can affect employment and household income.
Those disadvantages can compound.
It is why advocates such as Asher have consistently pushed for child wellbeing to be considered across government rather than being treated solely as the responsibility of the health system.
Preventing childhood illness can therefore deliver benefits extending into education, employment and the wider economy.
A question of priorities
The debate comes at an important moment for Aotearoa as political parties argue over welfare, government spending, housing and the cost of living.
Those arguments can often become dominated by billions of dollars, deficits and fiscal targets.
But Asher’s work brings the discussion back to what those decisions can mean inside the homes of ordinary families.
A child does not control the rent their parents pay, whether their home is damp, how much income comes into the household or whether the family can afford heating.
Yet children can carry the health consequences of those circumstances.
That is why child poverty cannot be separated from child health.
If Aotearoa is serious about giving every tamaiti the opportunity to reach their potential, the measure of success cannot simply be whether the Government balances its books. It must also be whether children are growing up warm, healthy, adequately fed and able to thrive.
The linked Post article was not accessible through our research service while preparing this piece, so this article does not attribute specific claims or statistics to that report beyond the information supplied for this story.
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