Source: Child Poverty Action Group
What has changed
While DEP-17 asks 17 questions and defines material hardship at a score of six or more, the MH-18 index will ask 18 questions with a new threshold of seven or more.
The new index introduces questions about digital inclusion and bedding quality, which CPAG considers important additions. However, it removes an item relating to visiting local places (such as shops), a change that may reduce understanding of in-person social participation.
“These timely updates reflect the changing reality of our society, but it is concerning that social participation in-person has withdrawn, especially without clear reasons for the new Material Hardship Questionnaire being capped at 18 questions,” says CPAG Research and Programme Officer Dr Yu (Harry) Shi.
Concerns about children’s voices
Dr Shi also says the updated methodology offers little clarity on how children were considered in the redesign.
During an embargoed briefing on Friday, Stats NZ officials confirmed that material hardship will be assessed through the Household Spending Module, answered by a “nominated ‘best’ person”, typically the bill-payer, rather than young people themselves.
This means that while individual spending modules will be completed by all household members aged 15 and over, those responses will not directly inform headline material hardship rates.
CPAG is concerned this approach risks overlooking variation in children’s experiences within households, with more detailed insights only available to researchers through the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI).
“While asking each person of the age 15 or older to report on their personal spending behaviour, the collation of all individiual responses under a single data point does not reflect the weight of young people’s experience of material hardship, nor does the design align with its lead, the Child Poverty Reduction Act,” says Dr Shi.
“The onus of proof should not be on interested researchers to dive into IDI to isolate young people’s experience of material hardship.”
Impact of Census cancellation?
“The re-design of how we measure material hardship seems prompted by the scrapping of the Census rather than responding to callings of on-the-ground realities from affected communities. The methodology update should signal a concern for democratic input of how and what data is being collected in Aotearoa to measure child poverty.”
Importance of good child poverty data
Measuring material hardship tells us how many children are missing out on essentials such as food, clothing, heating or stable housing. Under the Child Poverty Reduction Act, this data is used to track whether life is improving for our most vulnerable tamariki.
Good data is also a key accountability tool: it allows the public to see whether governments are meeting the targets they have set for reducing child poverty, including the goal of halving it by 2028.
The latest figures from Stats NZ (year ended June 2024) show more than 156,000 children living in material hardship, about 13.4% of all children. This is slightly higher than in 2018 (13.3%), when the Act was introduced, despite improvements recorded over the years in between.
