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Writer's pictureCarol Barron
Jun 28, 20214 min read

“Blessed are the poor.” Luke 6:20

This article was first published in July 2018 in eMessenger.

Studies have found that most people would not be able to cover their housing costs for more than a month if one partner lost their job. Jesus identified with the poor and in reality it seems that most of us are merely one pay packet away from becoming homeless and poor. So what is the harsh reality of being poor? Here are some things the poor do on a daily basis:


1. Search for affordable housing.

New Zealand leads the OECD in homeless rates. We have a housing crisis which forces some families to make do with substandard or dangerous housing, depend on the hospitality of relatives, live in their car or in someone else’s garage, or go homeless. 1 in 100 Kiwis are homeless or living in a housing situation that is unsafe or unhealthy to them.[1] And you can wait anything from six weeks to six months for a HNZ home.


2. Try to make $55 worth of food last a whole week.

If you are lucky enough to have found a house to rent, it is likely that it will take up a huge proportion of your income and so there is very little left over to spend on food. So some people need to make $55 a week stretch feed four people. $55 a week is the required spend for an adult woman to meet basic nutritional needs.[2]


3. Subsist on poor quality food or skip a meal

High quality, nutritious food is expensive. So you settle for the food you can afford – the food that is processed and higher in calories that is cheaper than natural foods. 4 in 10 NZ households go hungry or skip a meal because of poverty.[3] And the same number – 4 out of 10 families living in poverty are the “working poor” where one or more householders are in full-time employment. 290,000 Kiwi kids live in low incomes households, that is 1 in 4 or 27% of all Kiwi kids.[4]


4. Work longer and harder than the majority of people.

There is a popular belief that people are poor because they’re lazy. However it is a misplaced belief as the poor work longer and harder than the rest of us. They often are working full time and have more than one job. They work longer hours for less pay.


5. Try to avoid getting beat up by someone they love.

Knowing that it is really hard to find a home, many women live in fear and will stay in a violent partner because she cannot afford to leave and her only other alternative is being homeless. Most women experience homelessness due to domestic or sexual abuse.[5]


6. Pay more than their fair share of taxes.

Another popularly held belief is that the poor don’t pay their fair share of tax. NZ has a scaled tax system and the more you earn the more tax you pay. In the 1980s the top marginal tax rate was reduced from 66% to33%. The number of high-wealth individuals increased with 252 people worth more than $50M in June 2016. However over a third of those 252 declared an income less than $70,000 - where the top tax rate kicks in.


7. Fall further behind.

Even when poverty is the result of poor decision-making, often it’s someone else’s choices that make the difference. If you experience poverty as a child, you are three to four times less likely to graduate high school. If you spend your entire childhood in poverty, you are five times less likely to graduate, which means your future has been all but decided for you.


8. Raise kids who will be poor.

68% of students from the most disadvantaged communities achieved NCEA Level 2 compared to 93% from the most advantaged areas.[6] Educational qualifications often determine future earning ability. A child’s future earnings are closely correlated to their parents’ earnings. The concept that you can claw your way out of poverty if you just try hard enough is, more often than not, a myth.


9. Live with illness and pain.

When you live in a cold, damp, over-crowded house and have to go hungry some days, it is no surprise that you get sick. But you can’t afford to go to the doctor because you can’t afford the costs of the appointment or the medication. Children in the most disadvantaged communities are nearly three times as likely to end up in hospital for common respiratory and infectious conditions associated with poverty.[7]


10. Live shorter lives.

In the poorest 10% of neighbourhoods, men live an average of 73 years, nine years shorter than in the richest suburbs.[8] Women in the poorest neighbourhoods on average live to 79, six years fewer than their counterparts in the most well-off suburbs.[9] These gaps are repeated along ethnic lines with Maori men dying an average of nine years earlier than non-Maori men, and for Maori women it is eight years.[10] And when lower-income people or Maori get cancer, their survival rates are lower.[11]


Despite all of this, people living in poverty accomplish an incredible goal every single day – they stay alive. When they are often facing day to day survival with crisis after crisis, they are resilient, have exceptional skills at making that $1 stretch, and strong coping strategies.

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