enhancing food security and physical activity for maori, pacific and ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Enhancing Food Security and Physical Activity for Māori, Pacific and Low-income Peoples870,000 dependent children. Checking with HES 2003/04, the number of childrenunder 15 in that year was 880,000, to which should be added dependent childrenaged 15-17. For illustrative calculations here we take 500,000 as being the number ofhouseholds with dependent children, and the number of dependent children as onemillion.There are advantages in targeting any subsidy at this group of households, andadvantages also in making the amount of subsidy proportional to the number ofdependent children. A good part of the concern about ‘food insecurity’ is concernabout food-adequacy for children in such households. Also, an eligibility criterionbased on the presence of children is administratively simple and is not stigmatising.An argument against is that it would require the setting up of a dispensing systemadditional to that already existing for the Community Services Card. Also foodinsecurehouseholds without children would not qualify. It has been claimed thatincreasing numbers of single people are using food bank services. 22The strongest arguments against targeting food subsidies at children in general arethat a ‘universal’ benefit’ is more expensive (unless total expenditure is spread morethinly), and that most of those receiving the benefit would not be in food-insecurehouseholds. In particular, ‘couple with children’ households are generally in the upperpart of the household income distribution. However, were household incomes adjusted(‘equivalised’), to allow for the number of persons in the household, and one-personand two-person ‘pensioner households’ set aside, this approach can be seen to berather better targeted. Also, any tax increase to fund the scheme would tend to fallrather more on better-off households. At a later stage in the discussion in this chapterwe discuss in more detail the issue of ‘equity’, in terms of household income(equivalised) and ethnicity, and of the extent to which payments based on number ofchildren are successful in targeting lower income and Māori, or Pacific peopleshouseholds.Question five: Should the amount of any benefit be capped?Yes. Once only part of the population is eligible, a failure to cap the amount, for agiven time-period, would lead easily to trading for profit with the non-eligible,discrediting the whole scheme n . Any capping would most easily be achieved byproviding a given dollar quantum at, say, weekly or two-weekly or four-weeklyintervals o , which could be credited immediately in total against qualifying purchases,rather than a given percentage discount allowed to cumulate up to the cap amount.Question six: What is a reasonable amount of benefit?For an approximate one million dependent children, a weekly amount of $5 per child(or $260 per year) would provide a useful supplement p to household income,particularly for low-income households more likely to be affected by food insecurity.The annual cost would be about $260 million. This fiscal cost is not negligible, butcould be justified in terms of tackling food insecurity, helping low-income familiesn One key informant mentioned anecdotal accounts of holders of the SuperGold card, which providesfree public transport outside rush hours for those aged 65 plus, lending their card to friends agedunder 65.o The more frequent the issue, the less the problem of expenditure being high in the first part of theperiod and inadequate towards the end.p Particularly for family incomes less than $500 per week, which could be expected to be the case formany ‘food-insecure’ families. The amount of $5 per week per child is a convenient number forcalculation purposes. Also it is not so large as to be fiscally improbable, nor lead to wide-scale trading ofthe subsidy.23
Enhancing Food Security and Physical Activity for Māori, Pacific and Low-income Peoplesfinancially, and encouraging better nutrition and improving food security throughincreased purchases of nutritious foods by families with children.Question seven: Are there any problems with inelastic price and incomeelasticities of demand?The proposed scheme is in effect an increase in income, though an increase whichhas to be spent on selected foodstuffs. There would certainly be some increase inconsumption of the qualifying foodstuffs, though not necessarily very much. Some ofthe savings from the scheme would be spent not on the selected foodstuffs, but onother goods and services, including other foods.Question eight: What ‘unintended consequences’ might there be?Increased demand for the selected foodstuffs would drive up their prices, thoughperhaps by not very much given the generally low price and income elasticities forfoodstuffs. Persons not qualifying would pay relatively more, and their purchases ofthese foodstuffs would fall. There is a possible issue here for pensioner households,although the evidence is that food insecurity is a problem for only a small proportion,only one or two percent, of those aged 65 and over. 23 Over the longer term, marketsupply of the selected foodstuffs could be expected to increase, moderating initialprice increases.Equity implications of the proposed interventionsIntervention One: Removal of GSTRemoving GST on foodstuffs, or on a specific category such as Fruit and Vegetables,in effect subsidises purchases for the whole community. As discussed earlier, thismeans that much of the subsidy goes to high-income households. The proposedintervention may reduce both ‘income inadequacy’ and ‘food insecurity’ rather more atthe bottom end of the income distribution, but does not do much at all for equityoverall.Intervention Two: Smart Card, or VouchersA ‘Smart Card’ scheme would provide qualifying households with discounts onqualifying foodstuffs. It has possibilities for both reducing food insecurity andimproving the nutrient quality of purchases. Three different possibilities wereproposed earlier in this chapter for defining the ‘eligible’ population q . The first was thatthey should comprise ‘beneficiary’ households. This would certainly have positiveequity consequences, but the problem is that non-beneficiary ‘food-insecure’households are not covered.A second possibility was that it should cover all households with income below aspecified ceiling. An obvious candidate would be to make the eligibility criteriaidentical to those for a Community Services Card r .q A fourth possibility is making the eligible population those households who apply for the TemporaryAdditional Benefit (see chapter on Full Benefit Entitlements). It seems unlikely this would be asatisfactory approach, because of ‘take-up’ problems with that benefit, because the problem is often not‘temporary’, and because food insecurity is a problem for a proportion of non-beneficiary households aswell.r Cards are issued to adults in family units. Their primary use has been to obtain higher subsidies ondoctors’ fees and prescriptions, but the progressive roll-out of PHO (Primary Healthcare Organisation)funding in recent years has much diminished their value for this purpose, and they could be phased outsoon as a means of obtaining primary health service subsidies. 2124
Page 1 and 2: ENHANCING FOOD SECURITYAND PHYSICAL
Page 3: Enhancing Food Security and Physica
Page 8 and 9: Enhancing Food Security and Physica
Page 76 and 77:
Enhancing Food Security and Physica
Page 78 and 79:
Page 80 and 81:
Page 82 and 83:
Page 84 and 85:
Page 86 and 87:
Page 88 and 89:
Page 90 and 91:
Page 92 and 93:
Page 94 and 95:
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
Page 118 and 119:
Page 120 and 121:
Page 122 and 123:
Page 124 and 125:
Page 126 and 127:
Page 128 and 129:
Page 130 and 131:
Page 132 and 133:
Page 134 and 135:
Page 136 and 137:
Page 138 and 139:
Page 140 and 141:
Page 142 and 143:
Page 144 and 145:
Page 146 and 147:
Page 148 and 149:
Page 150 and 151:
Page 152 and 153:
Page 154 and 155:
Page 156 and 157:
Page 158 and 159:
Page 160 and 161:
Page 162 and 163:
Page 164 and 165:
Page 166 and 167:
Page 168 and 169:
Page 170 and 171:
Page 172 and 173:
Page 174 and 175:
Page 176 and 177:
Page 178 and 179:
Page 180 and 181:
Page 182 and 183:
Page 184 and 185:
Page 186 and 187:
Page 188 and 189:
Page 190 and 191:
Page 192 and 193:
Page 194 and 195:
Page 196 and 197:
Page 198 and 199:
Page 200 and 201:
Page 202 and 203:
Page 204 and 205:
Page 206 and 207:
Page 208 and 209:
Page 210 and 211:
Page 212 and 213:
Page 214 and 215:
Page 216 and 217:
Page 218 and 219:
Page 220 and 221:
Page 222 and 223:
Page 224 and 225:
Page 226 and 227:
show all

enhancing food security and physical activity for maori, pacific and ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?