Institute for Governance and Policy Studies & the School of Government
Abstract
Poverty in New Zealand is one of the foremost challenges we face as a country. Child poverty rates remain persistently above rates in many other developed countries and well above the rates prevalent in New Zealand during the 1980s. Poverty is of particular concern in a number of parts of provincial New Zealand, where it coincides with high rates of drug dependency, poor health outcomes – reaching Third World standards in some areas – high crime and victimisation levels and multi-generational cycles of disadvantage (Ministry of Social Development, 2010; New Zealand Treasury, 2017a)
