Time for Action on Income Inequality – Evidence Shows None of the Excuses Count

“No more excuses. All the evidence here and around the world shows the excuses are wrong. New Zealand’s future now depends on solving income inequality,” according to the Closing the Gap Income Inequality project.

Two OECD reports released in the last week provide clear evidence that poverty is undermining the education of our children that will determine our future economic and social future,” according to project co-ordinator Peter Malcolm.

“These and other studies prove it’s time to face up to fess up and actually recognise the inequalities problem in New Zealand and urgently do something about them.”

The OECD report (“Low-Performing Students – Why They Fall Behind and How to Help Them Succeed”) conducted tests of 15 year olds around the world in 2012 for the Programme for International Student Assessment.

It found that the poorest 25% of New Zealand students were more than six times more likely to do badly in maths than those from the richest 25%. This result is five times worse than that for Australia. Only three other countries, Israel, Poland and Ireland, were worse than New Zealand.

“These are basic skills that children in poverty are falling behind on. The consequences in the long term will be very serious,” Mr Malcolm said.

“Even bright, intelligent kids that are living in poverty perform badly,the second OECD report shows that people can’t bring up the hoary nonsense that teachers in low-decile schools are not teaching to the same standard as their high-decile colleagues,” Mr Malcolm said.

The second OECD report (“The Teaching and Learning International Study – TALIS”) ranks New Zealand teachers as the fourth most professional in the world and shows their quality of teaching is consistent across New Zealand schools, regardless of decile.

“Yet how does a family that can’t afford to buy their kids books teach them to read pre-school? And last week the principal of Glen Innes School reported that some of their parents were so poor their children couldn’t afford swimming togs for the school’s swimming training programme,” Mr Malcolm said.

“A common belief propagated by some politicians and members of the public is that children in poverty suffer because of lazy, bad parents, not a lack of money.

“But even that is proven wrong now. Just as are claims that there is no silver bullet to solve the problems.”

An eight year study in North Carolina (Duke University, USA 1992 – 2003, “The Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth”) shows that boosting the incomes (without strings attached) for our poorest families will close about half of the gap in health, education and employment between the haves and the have nots.

The families who were moved out of poverty with the regular payments displayed less stress-related behaviour. They had fewer arrests, had more quality time with their children, improved their parenting behaviours, while the children themselves were happier, stayed in school longer, and committed less crime, compared with poor families in Smoky Mountains who did not receive the payments.

“These improvements were greatest for the poorest families. No such changes were found in those families who did not receive the payments,” Mr Malcolm said.

“So it’s time to end the excuses. New Zealand’s future depends on action now to address closing the inequalities gaps. The evidence now is so clear that the motives of anyone not doing so should be closely questioned.”

ends

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