Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Ministry says strange stuff about stats

I asked the questions,

1/ At December 31, 2009, how many DPB recipients had a dependent child born in 2009?

2/ At December 31, 2009, how many DPB recipients had a dependent child born in 2008?

3/ What was the age, gender and ethnicity of the DPB recipients in each of the above groups?


The answer was prefaced as follows;






"Dropped"? That implies a change between two points in time. Furthermore, a positive change.

Think about it for a minute.

These figures are at the same point in time. It is to be expected that the 2008 figure would be higher than the 2009 figure because those babies have had an extra year to appear on welfare.

All I can conclude from this table is that at least 13,530 babies born in 2008 (21 percent of all babies born that year) were reliant on the DPB at December 31st 2010. There will be more that have been on welfare and left during the two years.



14,839 women who identified as Maori gave birth in 2008. 6,544 DPB caregivers of children born in 2008 identified as Maori. Most will be their mothers, but not all. So a ballpark figure for how many Maori babies born in 2008 were on welfare at December 31st 2009 is 44 percent.

This information pertains only to the DPB and 18-64 year-olds. So the percentages will rise if other benefits and ages were included.

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