Responding to recent rising unemployment figures, Social Development and Employment Minister Paula Bennett's response was to point to positive signs in the end of the recession and in falling numbers actually eligible to receive the unemployment benefit. And a decision to increase training opportunities for young people.

Business New Zealand's Phil O'Reilly noted: "It is very hard for unemployed people and their families. We do however have a sound unemployment support system and there are many public-private initiatives under way to help provide employment for those affected."

This week's release of the New Zealand Children's Social Health Monitor (www.nzchildren.co.nz) however raises important questions about whether the crisis has passed, and whether youth training will do the job. The report, launched at the New Zealand Paediatric Society's conference, was put together by a consortium of health researchers through the New Zealand Child and Youth Epidemiology Service, which supports DHBs and government around child illness and its causal factors.

It summarises extensive research, including New Zealand's own lifecourse studies of children's wellbeing, which suggests that children exposed to low family income in the early years, in addition to experiencing higher hospital admissions and mortality in the short term, also have worse long-term results.

This includes poorer cardiovascular and oral health, and an increased chance of becoming dependent on alcohol. Critically, moving out of poverty by adulthood, otherwise known as upward social mobility, does not appear to mitigate or reverse the long-term damage associated with childhood disadvantage. Worse, the negative consequences go well beyond the physical realm, and include leaving school early and without qualifications, being unemployed in later life, and falling into an intergenerational cycle of early parenthood and disadvantage.

Much of this is established scientific fact. But this report also points forward, reminding that in the previous recession, recovery of employment and incomes among families with young children was slow.

In the seven years after the last recession, and despite overall rising employment, some 30 per cent of children were in families that depended for at least three years on benefit income. A remarkable 54 per cent were reliant at some point. By age 7 in 2000, 20.8 per cent had spent five of their first seven years of life reliant on a benefit recipient, with 6.1 per cent reliant for their entire first seven years.

Data from 2003-4, a period of rising employment, showed that these families suffered extensive hardship, affecting areas as basic as attending the doctor, school outings, adequate rainwear, access to books, and involvement in sports.

While predictions, especially those involving the future, are notoriously frail, it seems highly possible that this situation will be repeated. Before the recession, one in five children was already relying on benefits. Those numbers are likely to rise and stay elevated for some time.