Bill English is quoted in the Herald today as saying, a propos of rising house prices and low housebuilding numbers: It’s clear that the lowest-income households have been the most affected so our planning processes have probably done more to increase income inequality in New Zealand than most other policies and it does remain a…
New Zealand is likely to face increased concentrations of wealth, inequality and power in the twenty-first century, according to newly assembled data. Economist Geoff Bertram, in a lecture to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, where he is a senior associate, said data he had assembled showed New Zealand fitted the pattern of other…
Donal Curtin has an interesting post up (responding to a talk I gave), in which he looks at whether large income gaps lead to lower social mobility. He presents a version of the graph below (where unequal countries have high ‘generational earnings elasticity’, i.e. a strong link between parents’ income and the income of their…
In light of today’s news that ACT leader Jamie Whyte believes most children are poor because their parents are addicts, I thought it was worth briefly posting some comments made last week by ACT’s Auckland Central candidate Dasha Kovalenko. Speaking at a forum on poverty that I chaired, Kovalenko, a 25-year-old junior lawyer, said there…
Recently I was interviewed for an article by a Marlborough girls college media student, Michaela Brooke Baillie, on inequality in New Zealand. One of the most disturbing parts of the article is the following section, in which she describes an evening meal at the local soup kitchen: After everyone has eaten and returned their plates,…
Economist Gareth Morgan recently argued that it’s inequality of opportunity, not any other inequality, that matters. With respect to Morgan and his huge contribution to this debate (in The Big Kahuna and elsewhere), I don’t think that’s the case. He argues: Surely we want to make sure that the poor have enough to participate. That is the…
The greatest pay excesses, in New Zealand and elsewhere, are in the private sector. But pay rates for the chief executives of government departments have also spiralled over the last three decades. And more so in New Zealand than almost anywhere else, it seems. The chart below, from the OECD’s Government at a Glance report, shows…
There’s a great piece today on one of the economist’s blogs, arguing that more redistribution is needed to make globalisation work. It’s coming in response to a recent line of attack on anti-inequality arguments: the idea that, because poorer countries are catching up to richer ones, and therefore global inequality is declining, we shouldn’t worry…
A reader has just emailed in with a link to something she’s been working on: this amazing graphic on poverty in America, and how it’s changed over the past 50 years. One thing that stands out for me is how much more educated people are (especially going by high school graduation rates), yet poverty levels…
This year’s Household Incomes in New Zealand, a key report on poverty and inequality published yesterday, bears very little to cheer about. Key points below. Inequality has risen slightly post the global financial crisis, reversing the decreases we saw before that thanks to policies like Working for Families. Since 2009, incomes have been static or…