Despite many attempts, we have been remarkably ineffective at reducing child poverty. Can we expect the current government to do better? Over forty years ago, researchers identified that children and their families were bulk of the poor It was not possible to do this earlier because there was not the data. The Muldoon Government began…
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Economists and policy analysts have paid insufficient attention to the distributional consequences of change. Hence the rise of the angries. In order to get to this column’s conclusion I am going to recall a little of my scholarly journey. When I came back from England in 1970, I looked around for a research area. Distributional…
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Far too much public commentary on wealth inequality obscures what is actually is going on. This column is a grump about the poor quality of public discourse. It is illustrated by the recent outburst over the distribution of wealth in New Zealand and some rather inept public responses to the recent re-publication of some data,…
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While overall income inequality may have been relatively stable over the last two decades, it appears to be increasing in Auckland (and perhaps in our other big urban centres). This column honours Bob Chapman (1922-2004), professor of Political Studies at the University of Auckland, remembered for his mentoring of many students including Helen Clark. He…
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Paper to the Fabian Society, 12 October, 2016 While we continue to chew over the carcass of the Fourth Labour Government – the Lange-Douglas one – we pay little attention to the subsequent Fifth Labour Government. Yet the Clark-Cullen one is greatly shaping the current Labour Opposition and the current National Government. It will,…
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In too many areas the government is avoiding taking policy decisions. When it has to its panic measures are knee-jerk and quick-fix. Just nine years ago, John Key, then leader of the opposition, spoke to the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Contractors Federation about housing affordability which he described then as a ‘crisis reached…
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Punitive public policy too often ignores its impact on the children involved. My last column described how the punitive measures we had for dealing with debtors were only abolished in 1989. Yet others continue to suffer from oppressive legislation – if they are low enough in social ranking. I was reminded of this by a…
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AUT Policy Observatory May 2016: The original is here. Contents Page 1. Why Government Spending is Necessary 4 2. The Public’s Demand for Public Spending 11 3. The Long-Term Record of Government Spending 15 4. Recent Trends in Public Spending 27 5. How Taxation Fits in …
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A journalist’s list of the ten most important issues politically facing us did not mention inequality and poverty. Why? A month ago Fairfax political journalist Tracey Watkins listed the following ten areas to watch out for in the political year: Spies (especially the review and resulting legislation) Iraq (will the two year mission be extended?)…
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AUT Briefing Papers October 6, 2015 Once upon a time New Zealand identified itself as egalitarian. Phrases like ‘a classless society’, ‘jack’s as good as his master; ‘a working man’s democracy’ were bandied around, often without much critical thought. A distinction was made between ‘egalitarian’ and ‘equalitarian’. Certainly the aim was that New Zealanders were…
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Recent publications suggest that the children who live at the bottom in economies with high inequality have reduced life chances. The grandfather of modern distributional research is Tony Atkinson, a British economist who began in the 1960s a lifetime career studying the British and world income distributions and other related ones. He has been described…
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The increase of the share of those on top incomes has not been caused by market forces but is the result of their more favourable taxation regimes they have experienced since the early 1990s. Policy Quarterly has just published papers from a symposium on distributional inequality held last June. There are really interesting papers by Geoff…
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The OECD says yes; how do we respond? Pundit: 15 December, 2014. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Growth & Innovation; A recently released OECD report concludes that economic inequality hurts economic growth, and has particularly done so for New Zealand. Some of our responses were plain bizarre. Either the non-economic commentators had not understood the issue or…
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Sloppy analysis is dividing us into the deserving and undeserving Pundit: 3 November, 2014. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Social Policy; Being no expert on domestic violence, I looked at the Glenn inquiry’s The People’s Report to see what it had to say about causes. I had expected a summary of the research literature…
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Thomas Piketty says economic inequality has been getting greater in the world, and will get greater. What about New Zealand? Pundit: 28 October, 2014 Keywords: Distributional Economics; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Paul Krugman has said “Thomas Piketty has transformed our economic discourse; we’ll never talk about wealth and inequality the…
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Symposium on Inequality: Causes and Consequences June 19, 2014 Keywords: Distributional Economics; Statistics; Introduction The purpose of this paper is to present some data on top market incomes in New Zealand. It updates an earlier paper by one year to 2011/2 and extends the estimates it back to 1936/7 . The background to…
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nequality, poverty, and prospects for a better life A Spirited Conversation: 28 May, 2014, Nelson Keywords: Distributional Economics; Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy; I want to begin by talking about Stacey who was a 14 year old Aucklander I met a couple of years ago when I was working on a…
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This was not published: 22 May, 2014. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Political Economy & History; Thomas Picketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century ‘has transformed our economic discourse; we’ll never talk about wealth and inequality the same way we used to’. So said Paul Krugman explicitly and ever so many other eminent economists implicitly…
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Chips with Everything It is a fallacy to claim the poor just need financial advice to improve their lot. Listener: 10 April, 2014. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Social Policy; I was working on a standard-of-living case and was shown figures prepared by an approved budget advisory service for Meg and her daughter Stacey…
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Statistical errors aren’t unusual – so it’s important to measure their effects. Listener: 13th March, 2014 Keywords: Distributional Economics; Statistics; There was a bit of flapdoodle recently when the Treasury and Statistics New Zealand owned up to having made an error in some household income statistics, which had a knock-on effect on…
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