Income trends elsewhere are variable. Middle-income households are not much better off than they were a few years ago. People in the upper reaches, those just below the top 10th, have had a decent - $2000 or so - increase in their discretionary cash. They get most of their money from salaries, and those higher salaries have grown despite the tough times. But the top 10th have seen an 8 per cent dip in income, owing to lower returns on their investments, which make up more of their income.
In all this, rising housing costs - which have outweighed many other gains - are crucial. They are partly responsible for the child poverty rate stagnating at around 270,000, one-quarter of all children, on the broadest measure (those living in families with less than 60 per cent of the average income, after housing costs). This rate had fallen sharply in the early 2000s, and is important because families under that line struggle to afford the necessities of life, according to both local focus groups and international evidence.
So what of the future? In Britain, by way of comparison, inequality is at its lowest since 1986 - but is forecast to pick up towards pre-recession highs, simply because the top has taken its pain, while the lower end is still to suffer the full effects of the post-GFC changes.
The story will be different here, but perhaps not that much. People's income from wages and salaries has fallen 2.6 per cent a year since the GFC, and is being propped up only by the welfare state. There is little sign of an increase in well-paying, full-time jobs.
Questions must also be asked about what is happening to the incomes of the large numbers of people who are currently being moved off benefits, potentially into even more severe poverty, or having their benefits cut.
Falling unemployment - if forecasts are right - might help, but not all that much if the jobs created are low-paid ones. And a more powerful influence on inequality, in all likelihood, will be the (expected) upturn in investment income for those at the top.
So it seems likely that inequality will rise in the next few years. If so, questions will be asked about how evenly the rewards of growth are being shared.
As a final point, it's also worth remembering that none of this changes the overall picture, which is that in the last 30 years, incomes for those at the top have doubled, while those at the bottom have stagnated. Someone in the lowest 10th of the country has, after housing costs, just $11,500 a year to spend. That figure (adjusted for inflation) in 1982? $11,000.
That's why inequality is now such a live issue.
Max Rashbrooke is the editor of Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis
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