Abstract:
We review the international literature for countries comparable to New Zealand and find estimates for the costs of child poverty to the economy of 3% to 4% of GDP. Our own calculations for New Zealand find that the costs of child poverty are in the range from 3.8% to 4.6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a cost for each of the 200,000 children growing up in poverty over their lifetime of approximately $600,000, at an annual cost of $35,000 a year. This translates to an annual cost to each New Zealand wage earner of approximately $4,000.