Demands From The Cpag Dangerous

Demands from the Child Action and Poverty Group for government to act to eliminate child poverty by 2010 are dangerous, Lindsay Mitchell, petitioning for a Parliamentary review of the DPB, said today.

"The Child Action Poverty Group have a distinctly socialist agenda despite this ideology having been proved a failure time and time again. Further propagation of socialist solutions is dangerous to the very people the CPAG claim to advocate for. For forty years government has transferred ever-increasing sums from one sector of society to another in fruitless attempts to eradicate inequality and all the CPAG can think of is to up the rate of that transfer."

"The CPAG ignore a very important study completed in New Zealand last year which found that the source of family income had more bearing on negative outcomes for children than did the level of family income. The authors summarised, "The findings show that poor children reliant on government transfers (benefits) when compared with poor children reliant on market incomes, have lower living standards and a number of compounding shortfalls that can be expected to place them at greater risk of negative outcomes."*

"Despite this finding the CPAG persist in calling for benefit levels to be raised. This would simply have the effect of further cementing the problem of benefits being more attractive than jobs. The number of children being raised on benefits, who form a particularly vulnerable group, would grow."

"The majority, 70 percent, of poor children reliant on benefits are in sole parent families. The DPB is at the heart of the problem. Until this benefit is scrapped and jobs are acknowledged as the answer, the numbers of sole parent families will continue to grow."

Lindsay Mitchell Petitioner for a Parliamentary review of the DPB e-mail mailto:dandl.mitchell@clear.net.nz ph/fx 04 562 7944

*Children in Poor Families: Does the Source of Income change the Picture, Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, Issue 18, June 2002

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