22 November 2008
Hungry children and the maths
22 February 2007
Te Waha Nui Online
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Far too many people don’t seem to understand how New Zealand can have hungry children.
It’s really just a question of maths, and you only need the most rudimentary numerical skill to work it out.
It’s not about education (as in knowledge of nutrition and the goodness of apples), it’s not about choice of entertainment (“pokies and P” seem to be the favoured current references to the entertainment of the poor). I won’t even deign to analyse the recent article headlined: “Is solo-parenting to blame?”
There is a far more basic answer. It’s the answer to a simple maths equation. It’s when outgoings necessary for meeting a first-world-family’s most basic needs outweighs income. For far too many people.
It’s about the cost of outgoings relative to people’s wages. It’s about the amount of the minimum wage. It’s about the reality of the working poor. It’s about the fact that women still do the bulk of childcare and housework and do not earn the bulk of wages.
It’s about the cost of maintaining high shareholders’ profits at the expense of an insecure workforce. It’s about the cost to individuals and families of redundancies, temporary jobs, casual wages and casual work conditions.
It’s about the cost of unemployment. It’s about the amount of food in those people’s fridges. It’s about whether or not they can afford the fridges.
This maths affects everyone, but it particularly affects those with children.
It is illogical (and cruel) to blame hunger on poor parenting and entertainment choices when you cannot subtract an impossible household budget from the equation.
When all New Zealand children and young people live in households with income that covers the basic cost of living, and allows for the responsible adults in their lives to properly care for them, then we can look at the parenting skills and entertainment choices of families in trouble.
But to do so beforehand is to grossly underestimate the role of the stress and strife involved in trying to raise a family when you cannot meet their most basic needs.
Children, you see, cost rather a lot of money to sustain, take a lot of time to raise. In our urban post-industrial societies they don’t produce, they entail an enormous financial outlay. As has been much publicised - many cannot afford to pay the fees for their children’s schools to properly resource their educations.
Often trying to find the money to cover housing, basic amenities like phone and power - adding the high cost of food to the sum - is a balancing act that cannot have a happy outcome.
That’s the maths.
And that’s poverty.
And we have plenty of it in New Zealand. From the latest UNICEF report: “It is seventh-worst on two measures of child poverty - children in families earning less than half the median income (15 per cent) and children in homes where no parent is in paid work (7 per cent).
We’re not a society that cares particularly about children. If you doubt this, go to any office of Work and Income New Zealand, any time of the day. I’m not talking about the actual workers – the case managers, those on the phones - many of them do a stellar job, I’m talking about the figures they have to deal with and the dollars they then have to deal out to people with children.
Call the Feilding high school (“a school is a business”) principal who kept students out of class because their parents hadn’t paid school fees.
If you think we are a society that helps all families support their children think again.
When it comes to explaining hungry children it amazes me that people still don’t figure in the maths.
Links:
- Adding up the costs
- Is solo-parenting to blame?
- 'Women and child poverty', by Susan St John
