New Zealand Child Poverty Under-counted

The number of Kiwi kids in poverty jumped by 60,000 in the recent global recession - twice as much as previously reported.

Revised figures show that children in homes with under 60 per cent of the median income after housing costs, usually cited as New Zealand's poverty line, leapt from 240,000 in 2007 to 300,000 in 2010, the highest since 2001.

The number has dropped back since then to 285,000, but this is still 20,000 more than the previously reported figure of 265,000. As a proportion of all Kiwi children, the revised figures show that children in homes below the poverty line increased from 22 per cent in 2007 to 28 per cent in 2010, and have dropped back only slightly to 27 per cent - not 25 per cent as reported previously.