"Welfare is markedly missing from 2026 election campaign issues. ...
"Super isn't sustainable.
"But what of working-age people? ...
"[A]mong physically capable people, long-term and inter-generational dependence is growing fast. ... Why? Is the shortage of paid work that severe? ...
"Work-aversion is learned and handed down. Children in long-term dependent homes have no working role model. Nearly three quarters of all beneficiaries up to age 25 had a parent on welfare while they were a child.
"At the end of 2025 over a quarter million children were dependent on benefits. ... Many of these children will spend their entire childhood and teenage years in an unemployed household, mostly with a 'single' parent. This impacts strongly on their life chances in respect of not just health and education, but security and safety. Of all children who had a finding of maltreatment by the age of five, 83 percent were on a benefit before age two. There is significant overlap between the Work and Income cohort, Oranga Tamariki and Corrections.
"So back to the election campaign.
"While much-needed fiscal savings could be made by tightening Super eligibility, it cannot be claimed that reliance on a pension at the end of one's life is damaging in the way chronic welfare dependence is, growing up and thereafter. That is the massive social problem New Zealand needs to grapple with.
"So why aren't political parties talking about this?"~ Lindsay Mitchell from her post 'Welfare missing from 2026 election'
Friday, 9 October 2026
Chronic welfare dependence "is markedly missing from 2026 election campaign issues."
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2 comments:
So do you believe the large majority of unemployed are trying hard, and it's only the state of the economy that's stopping them get a job? Or to state it another way, do you think it's incorrect that the ease of welfare disincentivises many from getting a job, when they could get one if they tried hard enough?
Yes, the ease of welfare disincentivises many from getting a job. And also all the cultural factors -- all those *chronic* factors -- associated with inter-generational welfare.
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