LINDSAY MITCHELL: Quarter of a million children are now dependent on welfare
- Administrator
- Jun 17
- 2 min read
It's appalling that a quarter of a million children now need an income from the state to feed, clothe and house them.
Data released under the Official Information Act shows over a quarter of a million children were dependent on welfare at December 2025.
At 31 December 2025 there were 255,300 children aged 0-17 reliant on a caregiver on a main benefit (234,429); or on an Orphan/ Unsupported Child benefit (20,871).
More than a third of all Maori children were dependent (36.5 percent) versus 16 percent of non-Maori.
Of the 57,705 births during 2025, one in five babies was welfare-dependent by year end. Dependence is established very early, often from birth. This pattern has persisted since the 1990s.
Over two thirds of the children rely on a single parent. Half of the children depending on Sole Parent Support are Maori.
For context, since December 2017 (when Jacinda Ardern made herself Minister for Child Poverty Reduction) the total under 18-year-old population has risen by 4.6 percent, whereas the number of under 18-year-olds dependent on a main benefit has risen by 31.2 percent.
Jacinda's prescription for solving child poverty was wrong.
New Zealand's 'child poverty' problem will not be solved while high numbers of children live in unemployed households. The ongoing response of raising benefit incomes and reducing the margin between work and welfare will only incentivise more people to opt for the latter. This normalises benefit dependency for children and the habit becomes inter-generational. Many of these children will spend their entire lives living on a benefit and develop an expectation of continuing this lifestyle as adults.
Chronic benefit dependency, lack of educational achievement, disproportionate use of health services, and contact with Oranga Tamariki and Corrections are all intertwined.
But perhaps the biggest tragedy is the thousands of children who are missing out on fathers. Personally, I lost my Dad last year and I miss that lifelong relationship. He was hugely influential in my life, I identified with him strongly and we understood each other. How many children are deprived of that inestimable value in their lives?
This country's approach has to change. I laid out a feasible policy here.
Let's hope at least one party will have the guts to make tackling this entrenched and worsening problem part of their election platform.
It's appalling that a quarter of a million children need an income from the state to feed, clothe and house them. These kids, and those that will inevitably follow, deserve a better chance of realising their own potential. This is still a first world country with ample opportunity for those who want to grasp it.
NZ productivity and GDP is too low. Finland same population last year GDP $315 billion.
NZ $263 billion. Finland has a pulp and paper industry $18 billion. NZ closed and imports fish and chip paper from Sweden. NZ has no industrial base to the economy, Finland does. The NZ economy has been sabotaged, it is deliberate. We have been totally let down by our MPs. Parliament trying to solve the problem by finding savings wont cut it. Exporting milk powder and logs wont save us. We need yo urgently raise our GDP by $52 billion to equal Finland. Forecasts for next year are Finland $338 billion, NZ $278 billion which is a difference of $60 billion. NZ needs less foreign…
Why do you highlight Maori statistics when we all want to be treated equally? Surely the problem is the number of children depending on Sole Parent Support, not the number of Maori children?
i just read your proposed policy. people who have nothing, and have had basically nothing for 5 or 6 generations since losing their natural land and forest resource base, have an ingrained blockage to participating in a system that robbed them of land and resource. the very same people work like the best of them, at the marae, and in contexts where they feel they belong. the probloem is not solved by sticking plaster big stick ideas as in your policy. becasue many people would rather die, than bow down and comply with what they see as a fundamental wrong, offence and theft of their life source and resource base. your policy idea wont work, its garbage, and pol…
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and human beings please consider this.
What has changed and is causing so many social and economic problems is the culture of western civilization. The morals and ethics of our culture were like the "glue" that united people to cooperate for their mutual benefit regardless of the differences that could divide them. That unity and willing cooperation were what enabled wesrern nations to thrive and prosper for over 100 years. What I mostly see and hear in the comments on this platform are people lamenting the rejection and corruption of that precious culture, that enabled New Zealand to thrive and prosper for so long. Behavours that were once immoral and unerthical have become tolerated and accepted
We are…
Admittedly a long time ago. but I remember quite clearly a time when being being unemployed or on a benefit carried a social stigma, and this was following WW2.
It was something you kept hidden, not crowed about.
Society at the time would not have been 'kind' (where have I heard that before?) reacting.
Whatever today's perceived 'crises' are, I'd suggest they do not even register on the scale of those times.
Ameni