Latest from Poverty

Child poverty fight needs plan

The Government recognised in last week's Budget that the gap between market and benefit incomes has become too wide.

Herald on Sunday editorial: Let's give these kids a pair of pyjamas

Child poverty figures can be hard to believe. The very word poverty hardly seems appropriate for a country with New Zealand's welfare net.

Aaron Quintal: Child poverty unexpected focus of Budget

Could business have expected more from a Budget labelled by Finance Minister Bill English as "a plan that's working"?

Dita De Boni: Let's give dispossessed a chance to dream

After some confusion about Whanau Ora, Dita De Boni visited a provider to better understand the initiative.

Poverty likely to slip down priority list

Finance Minister Bill English says there will be no new initiatives to address poverty in tomorrow's Budget New Zealand - despite the Prime Minister suggesting otherwise last month.

Groups urge child poverty focus

The petition comes as the Salvation Army said it fed 9.5 per cent more people last year in its Midland region than it did in the year before.

Baltimore's toxic legacy

The house where Freddie Gray's life changed forever sits at the end of a long line of abandoned row homes in one of this city's poorest neighbourhoods.

Stephen Howie: Kiwis need to shout out on child poverty

Returning home to New Zealand after more than 10 years away I find a country both hearteningly buoyant and unsettlingly fragile. Let me explain - the view of one returning son.

PM's focus on family hardship

Prime Minister John Key has announced a review of the ways the Government spends billions on vulnerable families and children ahead of the Budget in May.

1 per cent holds half the world's wealth

Combined wealth of world's richest 1 per cent will overtake that of remaining 99 per cent by 2016 unless action taken to curb "shocking extremes" of inequality.

Richard Randerson: Moral society must vote against poverty

Thirty years ago, NZ was a much more equal society. It could be so again. But it will take a huge shift in the mindset of the majority. Changing this state of affairs is a moral challenge to us all.

Deborah Morris-Travers: Kids should top Key's New Year resolutions

A new year means a wealth of resolutions. Most of us want to make life better, challenge ourselves or realise some of our ambitions

Living conditions worsening as services collapse

Isis' vaunted exercise in state-building appears to be crumbling as living conditions deteriorate across the territories under its control.

Cages lack any Christmas chair

A French mayor has been accused of a shameful lack of Christmas spirit after banishing homeless people from the city centre by putting cages over public benches.

Verity Johnson: These people are heroes

As I turned on to the corner of Hobson St, I froze. About 200 people were standing on the pavement. It was the queue to get into the City Mission.

Innes Asher: Low-income families' safety net needs repair

The latest figures show nearly one quarter of our 1.1 million children under 18 live in households with very low incomes after housing costs.