New Zealand's income gap doubles

New Zealand's income gap doubles
Research by Auckland University academics released on Friday by the Ministry of Education showed the average income gap between those with no educational qualifications and those with a secondary education doubled to $10,396 between 1981 and 2006. The proportion of uneducated couples who were out of work went from 6.9 per cent in 1981 to 16.3% in 2006. The latest figure was an improvement on the 21.8% recorded in 1991. The Gini co-efficient, an internationally recognised measure of income inequality, has gone from 26 in 1981 to 31.7 in 2007. A measure of zero represents perfect equality and 100 is perfect inequality.

Labour released a strategy on Friday that would see the long term unemployed threatened and prodded into work or the suspension of their benefit, the strategy of course won’t work because the underlying problem with the long term unemployed hasn’t been a lack of work, it’s been a lack of personal skills ranging from illiteracy to alcohol addiction and underwhelming educational achievements but no one ever lost a vote from a bit of bene bashing now did they. This latest news that NZ’s income gap has doubled reinforces the importance of universal education and that without massive investment into education the results are a halving of prosperity and a depletion of personal capacity that locks people into a cycle of low achievement and despair, but the pain of those very low on the social strata don’t tend to matter much to those charged with dealing to them.