Source: WEAll Aotearoa New Zealand
The latest child poverty statistics released today show our country is backsliding on any of the progress made since the Child Poverty Reduction Act was passed.
While Statistics NZ reports no statistically significant change in headline child poverty rates in the year ended June 2025 compared with June 2024, the longer-term trend shows that hardship has increased.
The percentage of children living in households experiencing material hardship was 13.3 percent in the year ended June 2018. That figure steadily declined to 10.6 percent by 2022, but has since risen again to 14.3 percent in the year ended June 2025, now higher than the 2018 baseline.
Rates are significantly higher for some groups. In the year ended June 2025:
- 25.1 percent of tamariki Māori are living in material hardship
- 31 percent of Pacific children, and
- 26.9 percent of disabled children.
WEAll Aotearoa Director Gareth Hughes says material hardship is an important measure: “At its heart, it measures whether a family can afford the basics for a life of dignity. Things like being able to keep the house warm, wearing shoes in good condition, having fresh fruit and vegetables, and kids being able to have a birthday or Christmas present.”
Previously, the Minister of Finance has said “The most fundamental thing that will help those targets is if we have a faster-growing economy with lower unemployment, better wage growth”.
Yet, Professor Paul Dalziel, Research Economist for WEAll says the data shows economic growth does not reduce child poverty.
“New Zealand’s GDP per person grew by around 75 per cent between 1984 and 2024. Yet children living in low income households increased from 14% to 21%,” Dalziel said.
“For 40 years, we’ve tested the theory that growth will lift children out of poverty. The evidence shows it does not.”
Hughes says we need to shift gears. “Instead of assuming trickle-down economics or more ambulances at the bottom of the cliff will solve the problem, we need a deliberate redesign of our economic system to tackle inequality”.
One practical alternative is the economic development approach of Community Wealth Building. This approach focuses on keeping wealth circulating locally: strengthening employment, supporting local enterprises, and building resilient regional economies.
“We need new jobs that pay living wages. We need to unlock community wealth building so prosperity stays in local communities instead of being siphoned out of them,” he said.
“That means using public investment, local procurement, and anchor institutions to build strong regional economies where families have the resources they need.”
“Scotland just passed a law making this mandatory for central and local government and we should follow their lead.”
Hughes says, “the persistence of child and whanau poverty in a wealthy country reflects a flawed economic system, and these numbers show New Zealand’s economic model is failing future generations”.
“An economy that works for future generations must put people at the centre,” Hughes says. “Right now, we’re measuring success in GDP while thousands of children grow up without what they need to thrive.”
“A wellbeing economy recognises that children’s wellbeing today shapes the country’s social and economic future. Their wellbeing should be treated as a core economic indicator”.
Hughes said the country faces a clear choice: “We can continue chasing growth and hope it trickles down (although we know it won’t). Or we can build an economy designed from the start to ensure every child has enough to thrive.”
