About 200,000 New Zealand children are suffering from lack of sufficient food, warm housing and adequate health care with children not reaching their potential in school.

Poverty has a greater impact early in the life of a child, Analytica’s John Pearce told ChildForum.

Mr Pearce has recently completed a two-year study entitled “An estimate of the national costs of Child Poverty in New Zealand” and is now preparing submissions on the Government Green paper, looking at suggestions for possible policy actions to reduce the effects of child poverty.

Mr Pearce advocates that parents’ ability to interact with their children in the first five years is the most crucial in their proper all-round development. His view reflects the philosophy of ChildForum which has been in the forefront dispensing appropriate advice and support for the best care and education for young children through the assistance of parents, educators and ECE services and others.

How well parents interact with their children in those early years – while talking, listening, educating and caring for them - is the most important element in the child’s development, he says.

The study defines child poverty as the relative lack of access to resources, and experiences, which have adverse effects on children’s later educational and personal development.  Mr Pearce highlights the fact that for individuals, the consequences of poverty are more related to “Poverty of Experiences” because these are the factors that influence their future opportunities, rather than directly to low income.

“Income is only a surrogate measure of the likely poverty of experience and this is demonstrated because some children from poor families are very successful.”

Mr Pearce wants the Government to devise and initiate policy action which focuses on family conditions prior to and during the first 5 years of the child’s life to have the maximum impact.

→ So what is the best way to increase the ‘cultural capital’ in households with babies and preschoolers (under 5s)?

→ Can “cultural capital” be lifted in households that do not have the money to buy books, whose parents have low-self-esteem and un-developed parenting skills?

→ Or is it a case, as our Government would have us believe, that the solution lies in children going into childcare and mothers on benefits being made to work? 

→ Will this reduce poverty of experience in the home?

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