Maxim on measuring poverty
The Maxim Institute has published a very readable 13 page paper on how best to measure poverty in NZ.
They make several recommendations:
- Poverty should be defined as a situation where: a person or family lacks the material resources to meet their minimal needs as recognised by most New Zealanders.
- Regularly publish a poverty and deprivation dashboard including income measures, deprivation and outcome indicators.
- Use consensual budget standards to better identify what most New Zealanders think is a minimal acceptable standard of living and potentially derive an income threshold from this process.
- Use clustering statistical techniques to target, tailor and evaluate policy by identifying people and families with different combinations of risk factors
- There should be some legislative requirement that the measures and indicators above are regularly published.
- A poverty-specific legislative framework should not be implemented.
- Extend the Better Public Service targets / Results for New Zealanders framework to include reasonable, time-specific targets aimed at reducing poverty.
I strongly support the first three recommendations. Poverty should be defined based on need, not based on comparative income standards.
I also think the recommendation to have a BPS target for reducing poverty is a bold one, but worth doing.