"Children in households with the same low income suffer hardship disproportionately if their parent is on a benefit."

"The source of income matters. A lot.

"Children in households with the same low income suffer hardship disproportionately if their parent is on a benefit. ...

"[The so called Ministry for Social Development] publishes a Child Poverty Report by Bryan Perry and has done so for many years ... The latest edition features a section on Children in 'working' and 'beneficiary' households. ...

"For children in poor working households their material hardship rate was 17 percent; for children in poor beneficiary households, their hardship rate was 47 percent.

"That is a significant difference. ...

"Based on the data ... a child in a poor benefit family is more than three times more likely to be in material hardship than a child in a poor market family.

"Whatever the personal circumstances, it is impossible to build a broad-based case for children growing up on welfare rather than in a working household. ...

"If the Left (Labour, the Greens, TOP and the Maori Party) was sincere about reducing child hardship they'd stop ignoring crucial evidence."

~ Lindsay Mitchell from her post 'What the Left constantly ignores'