Lindsay Mitchell has a very sobering statistic: 22.2 percent of babies born in 2011 were dependent on a caregiver receiving a benefit by the end of the same year.
“Over one in five babies reliant on welfare by year-end is a sobering statistic. Almost half of the caregivers were Maori and half were aged 24 or younger.”
“There is an established pattern of childbearing followed by reasonably rapid, if not immediate, recourse to welfare in New Zealand. This occurs during good and bad economic periods.”
“The implications for this high percentage lie in the likelihood of these children remaining on a benefit for many years. . . ”
This is the main cause of too many children growing up in poverty and shows why Social Development Minister Paula Bennett is determined to address the causes of benefit dependency.
Homepaddock 
Its not a welfare problem – it is a cultural problem, where western women have been bought up with an overwhelming sense of self entitlement.
Totally lost in all of this is the fundamental importance of raising the next generation.
By nature women get pregnant – it is best for all if they are married and attached to the father of their children but marriage has been well and truly trashed – turned at best into a quaint ceremony sealed with trite “wedding vows” followed by a party with a cake with two dolls on top.
Of course trashy (and they are for the most part extremely trashy) middle class women circumvent nature with contraceptives or if that fails baby murder to pursue whatever it is they are pursuing,
While for the poor for whom neither marriage (thanks to the cultural depredations of the elite) nor a career are real options their babies become a meal ticket.
And for males fatherhood is not an honourable estate but often just a ticket to the poor house.
We are committing cultural suicide
LikeLike
Andrei – it is both a welfare problem and a cultural one and I think the former is at least in part responsible for the latter.
Some people need welfare for, usually temporary, assistance for circumstances beyond their ocntrol. But some, and it is a minority, see it as a way of life to which they have a right and feel no responsibility.
LikeLike
You lauded the increase in the welfare on budget night HP.
It is as you so rightly say .. For those that need it on a temporary basis.
Not a life style..
LikeLike