Social Report Highlights Social Deficit Entrenched in 1990s

A new report has highlighted areas of lasting social damage that was entrenched by the government policies of the 1990s, Council of Trade Unions president Ross Wilson said today.

The Social Report 2004 was released today by the Ministry of Social Development.

“The report shows a marked improvement in some areas but the entrenched nature of other indicators such as income per capita and adult literacy confirms a lingering legacy of social deficit from the 1990s when economic gains were made at the expense of social improvements,” Ross Wilson said.

Other international studies have also drawn attention to the impact of the policies of the past two decades, he said.

“A research report by the Canadian Centre for the Study of Living Standards several months ago revealed that New Zealand workers suffered a drop of 6.5 per cent in real hourly earnings from 1980 to 2001, the worst performance of the 16 OECD countries in the study.”

By contrast, Japanese workers were up 69.4 per cent, UK workers 46.9 per cent, Canadian 39.5 per cent, and Australian 28.8 per cent.

“The Social Report confirms that the economic and social development policies of this Government are working but underlines just how much social damage was done by the neo-liberal experiment.”

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