The Government is making progress on lifting New Zealand children out of poverty, but are lagging behind on pulling more Māori, Pacific and disabled children out of poverty.
The latest child poverty statistics showed 6000 fewer children were living in material hardship in 2021 than the year before. The child poverty measures however, were relatively unchanged for Māori children compared to the previous year.
Child Poverty Action Group spokesperson Innes Asher said the latest statistics showed, "small progress on some measures, and none on others".
She called it "dismal".
"The picture is especially bleak for the tens of thousands of children with disabilities or living with a disabled parent, who experience the highest rates of material hardship, while Māori and Pacific children continue to experience unchanged, and very high rates on all poverty measures.
"Systemic, sustained increases in income for low-income families are needed, rather than reliance on private charity which cannot make enough difference.
"Each day, each week and each month counts for children, they cannot wait. The Government needs to get on with the job."
Material hardship is living in a household which regularly cannot afford to buy things like fresh fruit and vegetables, good quality meat and healthcare.
In the year ending June 2021, 125,700 children, or 11 per cent of Kiwi kids, were living in material hardship.
Child Poverty Reduction Minister Jacinda Ardern said in the last three years the Government had lifted 66,000 children out of poverty even in the face of Covid-19, "causing the greatest global economic downturn since the Great Depression".
“Policies like the wage subsidy helped keep people in work, our benefit increases have supported those who are out of work and our investment in various job programmes to support people back into work have all made a difference," she said.
But National's child poverty spokesperson Louise Upston said: "Government’s only strategy for child poverty seems to be making tweaks to the benefit system, but all they have succeeded in doing so far is to trap more people into benefit dependency".
Today's figures show the number of children living in a home with less than 50 per cent of the median household income, after housing costs, decreased last year by 16,000 to 187,300 children.
But the number of children living in a home with less than 50 per cent of the median household income, before housing costs, actually rose by 5,500 to 156,700.
When the Labour Government was elected in 2017 it set itself three main child poverty targets to be achieved by June 2021 and today's data show it has met two of them, one only just, and failed on the third.
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