A report explains why: small but accumulating biases together on top of adverse early-life social and environmental conditions. To be frank, this column on criminology is not in an area of my expertise. But in the course of my reading to place economics in a social context – I do that a lot – I…
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Last week’s report on wellbeing and the household income distribution told us some new things. Are we listening? Sadly, the latest MSD report The Material Wellbeing of NZ Households, by Bryan Perry, released last week, passed by quickly. It said, broadly, that there is no obviously significant shift in the level of inequality in recent years….
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What are the possibilities for the future housing prices? What can we do? Two eminent but retired Reserve Bankers, Don Brash and Arthur Grimes, have argued that house prices should halve. I am not sure whether they actually mean it or are just vividly pointing out that house prices are about double the sustainable level….
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As the proposed Ministry of Vulnerable Children shows, we do not take prevention seriously. In 1920, someone wrote in the Maoriland Worker, ‘The politician is like the person who would build an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, instead of constructing a good fence at the top.’ The image seems to have been coined in a…
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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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The Reserve Bank cannot deliver affordable housing by itself. Its actions have to be coordinated with the government’s. Unfortunately the monetarist framework of the Reserve Bank Act obscures this. The tensions between the Reserve Bank and the Government over housing policy go back to the mistaken economic thinking in the 1989 Reserve Bank Act. Monetarism…
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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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The government has let the housing market deteriorate with measures which are insufficient, late and ineffective. As a first step we need to identify the underlying problems. The Prime Minister’s announcement that there is nothing new about homelessness is both an example of his strengths in reassuring the public that there is never really 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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A report on social services by the Productivity Commission raises serious problems about the quality of analysis in New Zealand. There is a widely held perception that the Productivity Commission, which makes recommendations to the government on how to increase productivity, is neoliberal. Partly that is because the commission was set up at the instigation…
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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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I am not sure when I wrote this; perhaps 2015. My main income over the years was as a consultant. Often I did very interesting – and for me enlightening – pieces of work, which are normally somewhere in the public domain (such as on my archive-blog) although they often lack the background of a…
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The 2015 Budget did not deal with children’s poverty but it did put a down payment. (This is based on a presentation to a Child Poverty Action Group Post-budget Breakfast.) The budget begins by identifying five ‘fiscal priorities’. Three are about the fiscal deficit and the track of the fiscal debt, one is about ACC…
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Can an environmentalist focus solely on sustainability or are they drawn into wider issues such has how fairly the material product of the economy is distributed? Perhaps heightened by the leadership contest in the Green Party, there appears to be a debate going on about where environmentalism fits into the political spectrum. I am not…
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The Elimination of Child Poverty Requires a Universal Child Benefit. The Growing Up in New Zealand Study at the University of Auckland found that half of the 7000 families in their sample suffered measurable material hardship in their babies‘ first years of life. That so many of New Zealand’s children are in poverty eating poorer quality food…
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They involve tax rates horrendously high or the minimum incomes so low that the UMI is not a viable means of eliminating poverty. The notion of a universal minimum income has had a long gestation. Some say it originated with a proposal for a ‘social dividend’ by Lady Rhys Williams as far back as 1942…
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How much should the state be involved in determining who are in a marriage relationship? Pundit: 12 December, 2014. Keywords: Social Policy; The recently released Child Poverty Action Group’s (CPAG) report on the Complexities of Relationship in the Welfare System and the Consequences for Children tells some ugly stories. Benefit entitlement can depend upon the…
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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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