This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.
Some say the latest poverty figures show no significant change, some say there was a small improvement. Some say that the government’s policies are failing; others that they have done very well in difficult economic circumstances. Take your pick. Then the commentariat moves on.
This is all very superficial, characteristic of much public policy discussion. Little attention is paid to why it has been so difficult to get the figures down (let alone what has been the damage to those left behind).
The difficulty has been that much of the public disquiet has been driven by people of goodwill who have little understanding of the technical issues. ‘Just do it’ is not a policy.
Suppose you wanted to halve child poverty. A technician would begin by looking at the statistical record over the years back to 1984. (I did an earlier estimate for 1974 which is not really comparable with the official data but tells much the same story.)
What the data shows is that child poverty, measured by income deficiency, doubled in the early 1990s. Otherwise the level has not changed much before or since. (The flutters around these trends are from measurement noise – the data base is from smallish samples – or from the fluctuations in economic activity from the business cycle – which are hard to analyse because not every year was sampled.)
The reason for the gigantic leap is that Rogernomics had given substantial tax cuts to the rich – both cutting top income tax rates and also substantially reducing taxation on dividends. The incoming National Government – led, in this instance, by Ruth Richardson and Jenny Shipley – paid for the tax cuts by cutting the incomes of those lower in the income hierarchy. As a rule the lower in the hierarchy, the greater were the proportional cuts.
The poor were targeted in the name of ‘redesigning the welfare state’. The philosophy of the redesign was never articulated. The best I can explain is that they thought the liberal welfare state, set up by the First (Savage-Fraser) Labour Government (and formalised by the 1972 Royal Commission on Social Security) was too generous and that the minimalist American-style welfare state was more appropriate. Thus the substantial cut in state support for the poorest and the rise in child poverty.
The last few paragraphs are orthodox, based on the evidence and sentiments articulated at the time. Regrettably, those who implemented or supported the redesign have never given their account of what happened. They seem almost too embarrassed to provide a defence of their actions.
This has left New Zealand in an unresolved philosophical tension. Do we want a minimalist welfare state or a liberal one? The answer is ‘yes’ to the first option when we are thinking about tax levels, and ‘yes’ to the second when we think of government initiatives which require more tax. (Of course, social philosophy is rarely articulated by New Zealanders except in slogans and proposals for action, but you know what I mean.)
It is no secret that I am a supporter of the liberal welfare state with its objective of enabling everyone to be able to participate in and belong to their society. What is often overlooked is that assumes our sort of society is founded on the functioning family. Children in poorly functioning families are likely to become adults who are less healthy, more prone to crime, have poorer work productivity, and more likely to be parents in dysfunctional families themselves. There are many causes of dysfunctionality, but we may be confident that poverty is a contributor adding to the pressures and that improvements in income will often improve performance. Thus the Richardson-Shipley redesign undermined many families with ongoing consequences for the education and training, the healthcare and justice systems, and for the overall wellbeing of the community, their children and the future.
Noticeably in the recent public wrangle over the education curriculum no attention has been given to the central role of families in a child’s education. Rather, we once more looked for short-term bandages in the education system for long-term problems among families.
But even if we ignore such long-term social investment issues, there remains the ‘social justice’ issue of whether a society can tolerate the degree of child poverty that exists in ours. (Don’t all shout at once.)
The Ardern-led Labour Government said that we shouldn’t, and passed the Child Poverty Reduction Act in 2018, which was concerned about halving child poverty. In effect, it was proposing to reverse those changes to the tax and benefit structure implemented in the early 1990s. That would have been the biggest distributional change for three decades; that would be the most revolutionary (transformational) change since Rogernomics. Implementation would have made it a genuinely radical government.
I doubt that Labour understood this implication of what it was proposing. In the thirty years, the political economy has changed, with the rich using their financial power to shape the public conversation. The rich could not stop the aspirations of child poverty reduction being legislated, but they have limited the ability to really reduce child poverty because it would involve higher tax rates and their paying more tax.
So, while the government has been virtue signalling with low-cost policies which may (or may not) alleviate poverty at the margin, as the statistics show it has made little progress towards its aspiration of significantly reducing poverty. Are you surprised?
PS. As much as I would have liked to, I have not critiqued how we measure child poverty. It seems likely that a more rigorous approach to measuring it would not change levels or trends much, but it would lead to more rigorous thinking and better policy. For instance, some work I have done suggests that existing child support, particularly Working for Families, is very inefficient in that an alternative approach could take the same number of children out of poverty at markedly less cost to the taxpayer; alternatively, the existing funds could be redeployed to markedly reduce the number of children in poverty.
*Brian Easton, an independent scholar, is an economist, social statistician, public policy analyst and historian. He was the Listener economic columnist from 1978 to 2014. This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.
61 Comments
If this was an article on property we would have dozens of comments by now.
Just getting some basics back in place like more regular pre and post birth services and support, adherence to vaccinations and health services, increased pre-school and school education and increased support for meal services? We need more people able to look after themselves.
Paragraph 6"As a rule the lower in the hierarchy, the greater were the proportional cuts." referring to cuts in income; still happening today and indeed accelerating, especially as tax bracket creep bites harder.
And Brian while you may be a fan of a liberal welfare state, the end result is that we are paying non-working children to have children. This should never have been allowed to happen. For thousands of years parents have had to be able to provide for their children if they wanted them to survive. That liberal welfare state has turned that on its head, and people expect the state to support them when they have children. At the risk of being overly harsh, I would go so far as to suggest that child poverty is a state that has literally been chosen by more than 80 - 90% of parents with the unreasonable expectation that others will pick up the tab for them.
You’re saying what some of us (maybe most) are thinking there.
Taking money from the average or above and handing it to people who have either at best minimal financial knowledge (usually this is not by choice)…
Or those have shown poor attitudes/wanton disregard for the community they live in (at a very unscientific guess, probably 1% or less of the population doing this on purpose), or putting resources into the most problematic kids and ignoring and/or focusing less on the others…
I don’t see how that will improve the country. Throwing money at poor behaviour encourages it? Education attempts before punishment seems odd?
Civilised people don’t allow uncivilised people to continue their behaviour. Aka whoever is in charge makes the rules on what is acceptable behaviour I suppose. We get what we vote or don’t vote for?
Here's some quotes from a recent article on homelessness in the NZ Herald the other day.
"A working couple with five children living in a motorhome after a four-year battle to find a rental feel like they are failing their children....They have adapted their motorhome and trailer to accommodate their sleeping needs, with a special cot for their seven-month-old." So homeless for 4 years but still producing more children.
"... is living with nine family members in a three-bedroom home. The young single mum is desperate to find a rental, and says it’s proving impossible to convince landlords she is “good enough”. “I’m really, really desperate... it’s just so difficult.” She is due to give birth to her second child in April". Clearly desperation to find a home (or a job) is not preventing her from having more children either.
Now ask why there are problems solving the child poverty problem? Is it that these people are not being given enough welfare handouts, or is it that they are choosing to produce more and more children when they know they cant even afford the ones they have? Mandatory contraception might be a good start to solving the issue.
NZ is not suffering from an oversupply of children and our birthrate is below population replacement levels. So what should we do with these children, should we make sure that they are well housed, well fed, well educated and healthy so that they grow into productive adults or do we just leave them living in poverty as some sort of punishment which seems to be the solution of others in these comments.
So the question really remains, do we see raising children as productive enterprise for a sustainable society and economy. Seems like a no brainer to me. We've produced a society which relies on two full time incomes to simply exist, the moment a child enters the equation the advice is to keep working two full time jobs and put the child in care. I don't think the problem is the solo parent who chooses to spend their time raising productive members of society, but rather that we'd rather they work because "iF 1 h4v3 2 wuRk, tH3y sHud 2!".
I would rather my tax dollars go to a parent working their ass off raising kids than to a boomer sitting on three passive rental incomes and a nest egg. What's the problem here?
The planet is most definitely oversupplied with people - heading towards 10 Billion people. Every country in the world should be looking to reduce the population, starting with NZ. There are plenty of people in the world that we can import, we do not need to breed them. Uncontrolled breeding is what is destroying the planet.
In excess of 200 years of being proven completely wrong , yet the Malthusians keep tolling their turgid tune of gloom & destruction ...
... they forget science ... innovation & creation have led us to amazing improvements in our standard of living ...
Even as we speak , artificial intelligence promises to usher in a new leap in our technological progress ...
And yet climate change is real. And 100% caused by too many humans on the planet. Less humans = no more climate change. Not to mention the fact that in the fight against climate change our standard of living is going backwards. Less of everything, lower quality of everything.
Should we also deny healthcare to the overweight? It is a personal choice to eat too much and exercise too little of course.
Most NZers believe in everyone getting basic standards, and it is not the children's fault that they were born into these circumstances. Further, decades of evidence has shown that the more educated and wealthy people are the fewer children they have.
We don't pay people to overeat and get diabetes. We do pay poor people to keep producing children they cant afford. The more you financially incentivise poor people to keep reproducing, the more children will be born into poverty. And currently there are an awful lot of people happy to be living on benefits doing nothing but producing kids, expecting that the Govt will reward them for it.
Another good reason for a UBI. Things like WFF (i.e., a child/dependent numbers-based policy) goes away. A government might still want to consider a fixed amount as a child benefit paid (or vouchered) on birth to ensure the early year additional expenses (e.g., nappies, push chairs, car seats, formula, immunisation expenses, etc.) are fully covered.
Imagine being a 17 year old looking forward to your 18th birthday when you begin receiving the UBI. It basically guarantees your independence - partnering-up with the potential for children at an early age just doesn't make sense when you are independent of your own accord.
The first thing to understand about taxation is that it doesn't pay for anything, no one is paying for others children. The government creates currency when it spends and it cancels currency when it taxes. Those who accumulate the greatest quantity of this currency should also be the ones who return the greatest quantity in taxation. Poverty is all about an unfair distribution of the nations resources.
Taxation maintains the value of this currency and frees up the resources which the government can then employ for the public purpose. Economist Stephanie Kelton explains here.
There is a finite amount of money the government can create and also keep our currency stable if we hand a dollar of that money to person A we cannot also hand it to person B. Giving money to people with no job and multiple children means we are not of using it to battle climate change or for health, cancer drugs or teachers salaries. Also -if we actually create more currency we devalue what is there already. then if the multiple children of the current beneficery follow the same path we have less in the future for our productive society as a result of todays actions.
Anyone can affect the uneven distribution of currency at any time(in their own direction) by choosing to get a job and working hard.
Fixing the problem wont be organic - but It will simply take a decent, lengthy economic downturn- for when the people and government are focussed on costs because revenue is down - then benefits will get attention and pressure will mount on the beneficeries contribute and for children to attend school and be productive. til then.. whatever.
The government is not the only creator of money though, the banks create far more money as credit. We need to give our children all the best opportunities in life so that they don't go on to become tomorrows statistics and economic austerity is never a solution for social problems.
Tax absolutely pays for everything the government spends money on, including welfare. The government does not create currency. Absolute poverty has nothing to do with distribution of resources; that is relative poverty. The correct progressiveness of taxation is entirely subjective. Taxation does not maintain the value of any currency; that is maintained by the confidence of every person in using it to exchange goods and services. Taxation does not free up resources; it takes resources to redistribute.
Nice one murray 86
Kids having kids is crazy in a country with failing education, health, and poveŕty outcomes.
Its even crazier when the "be kind" government has allowed crime to increase, ignored maori crime, while emptying prisons.
Its a perfect storm designed by a government inorder to look good for the noisey minorities?
Aye Marama!
Agree, for now its not a priority. [As with all things] at some point it will affect the masses and will need to be solved with urgency...
Child poverty, climate change, OCR changes, AI controls will however likely be on the list of policies fought over in the election .... so its great to be able to start to read about it.
The sad reality of the masses is if they are not compelled to improve by higher institutions, they tend to dissolve into degeneracy.
The masses were far improved by the mass society of participation, food provided through schools, scouts, military service etc. Any young man who has gone through scouts, military service etc finds themselves greatly improved by the end of it.
If you really want to improve people, you have to make demands of them. If the society was willing to return to mandatory scouts and summer camps for children to build their skills and military conscription after schooling, it would likely be a far better, more coherent society.
So what Brian is saying is essentially that the tax/welfare system needs radical overhaul to reverse the 30+ years of decay which has resulted in a pervasive and persistent intergenerational poverty trap. And I'd add that comparisons to the past are of no use in terms of the current and/or future. We have to design for what is essentially a very different epoch/era. In human/geological terms we have exited the Holocene and entered the Anthropocene.
Hence, no amount of 'old world' tack-on, targeted social welfare initiatives on housing, food, education, emergency assistance, etc. provide the self-determination and security that lifts individual and family pride in making your own way on your own terms in harmony with others around you.
To my mind, the only thing that would achieve this is a UBI - a basic income absent all the claw backs, marginal tax rate punishment and visits to MSD. A UBI rids us of everything that is de-moralising and de-humanising about our current tax/welfare system. It lifts overall societal wellbeing.
The future is not one of stable employment/stable housing/stable food and energy supply. Restoring pride in self and community is essential to face the hard times for all that is coming.
Brian, you introduce a subject of immense scope which rather defies your short term analysis going back to the 1930's and the "wonderful" Mickey Savage government.
I do agree with you about a family centered society, but the evidence of your "liberal welfare state" (Savage/Fraser/Kirk governments et al) has given instead a highly state-centered society. The slogan, "from everyone according to their means, to everyone according to their needs", sounds good at first thought, but the reality has been lots more 'needs' than we have 'means'! And the spoken claim of that first socialist government that,.."you don't need a bank account, we (government) will look after to you from cradle to grave", took the emphasis off individual and family responsibility.
I personally don't have many bright ideas on solving child poverty, but I do think we need to rebalance toward personal responsibility and accept that the state is a very blunt instrument little able to solve these highly diverse and individual circumstances that have lead to our present undoubted societal problems.
In my humble opinion the worst aspect of the covid emergency, and the recent flood devastation has been the thought that individuals affected just need to wait patiently for the 'gummit' to provide the necessary solutions. At best they, the state, can help around the margins, but we need to put much greater emphasis on personal resilience,..at all levels down to our school kids.
I was greatly encouraged by those recent flood stories on tv of families and volunteers just "mucking in" to cope as best they could. Unfortunately government and the media had much grander plans that apparently just needed stickers on the homes and tell folk to wait for the state to arrive with all manner of goodies.
Brian, I think your "liberal welfare" state must, by recent experience and statistics, record an "utter failure" on its report card.
The quote from Marx is:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs
The way I read/interpret the first 'leg' is focused on labour - i.e., ability being an individual's labour within society. Hence, if one's foremost interest/ability/talent is in art, then they are trained and work/labour in the arts. If one's foremost ability is empathy, then they are trained and work in the humanities (e.g., health/psychology/social service). If one's foremost ability is numeracy, then they are trained and work in accountancy, physics, etc.
It's very similar to the philosophy of a Montessori education system. We identify early interests, talents and strengths in an individual and provide direction towards greater and greater knowledge and achievement in that area.
The other side of the coin relates to social/family needs - if you are the sole income earner of a family of five children, then your needs are greater than those of a single individual with no dependents. If you are in a permanent relationship with another adult income earner with a family of five children, then your needs are less than that of the sole income earner with a family of five.
As Marx explains;
after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly
My Dad used to explain it as whether you choose to live to work, or find yourself instead having to work to live. He was trained/worked as a physicist (the military sent him to uni after his term of service, and choose his subject of study, then placed him in a government job), but he always aspired to be a musician/sound technician :-).
Thanks Kate, I accept your correction to my quote. Nevertheless, whatever Marx thought, the reality down in the bowels of our government is still about "means",...ie transferring wealth. Another quote I quite like is from Bob Jones..."I am not a Christian but I understand both the Christian and the socialist seek to be their brother's keeper. But the Christian does this by giving, and the socialist by taking ".
Very simple - needs equate to comfort, sustenance and security. In the Aristotelean ethical sense, the midpoint between excess and deficiency (i.e., the golden mean).
https://historyplex.com/aristotles-philosophy-of-golden-mean
You can apply this to politics as well, which is probably why the best policy is coming from the extreme centre party TOP. For too long have we been flip flopping between the left and right, without realising the centre way is best, ignoring extremists on the left and right. The main parties have simply worked themselves into ideolgical corners "You know what you will get if you elect us" who will find change impossible as their base is a tribal group of rigid thinkers.
Yes, it is so applicable to aspects of and choices made in everyday life - including politics. TOP does seem to be the politics of moderation and balance. And what's also interesting, Raf Manji is a reader of philosophy, as indicated in his Chch TedTalk.
So other people will decide what your level of comfort is, how much sustenance you can have and whether or not you're secure? I can just tell that'll go down well!
Bottom line; for thousands of years every single culture has require people to labour for their survival. How hard they worked determined their survival and excess allowed them to build a level of comfort. Our liberal welfare state has turned that on it's head too. A UBI would exacerbate that. I agree that a welfare state is a good thing, but only where it is needed. I believe our government should focus on ensuring there are jobs available at good wage levels, and people should be expected to work for a living, and not have the option to opt out. That a genuine welfare need is the only qualifying criteria for an income from the Government, and having children without the means to support them is not a genuine need.
So other people will decide what your level of comfort is, how much sustenance you can have and whether or not you're secure?
No, you miss the point - such decisions are based in ethics, not self-interest/greed as has been where capitalism has taken us. It was not what Adam Smith envisioned as he was a philosopher of ethics during the Enlightenment period.
C'mon Kate! Theoretically Government is based on ethics - how well has that worked out? While individual iterations may be argued as ethical, human beings are fundamentally just too self interested and will corrupt this very quickly. Human psychology will always come to the surface. Besides what is comfortable for me, (or enough sustenance) may not be for you, or the next person, so how will ethics accommodate wide variation?
I'd be the first to admit this is a theoretical discussion. But I do think humankind can and will come to a time when we make decisions based on moral premises, as opposed to self-interest. Religion used to instill this type of mindset/thinking, but like so many hierarchical organisations, many became corrupted, and large swathes of the population have turned away - leaving a moral void in many of our children's upbringing.
First and foremost, coming to that way of moral thinking to guide our actions, requires a sound grounding in the teaching of the philosophy of ethics within the school curriculum. I have experience of introducing the subject to university students and it is heartening to see the 'pennies drop' when young people are exposed to this new knowledge/way of thinking. That so ,any amongst our Western populations miss out on this type of philosophical grounding is a big disappointment of mine.
As Francis Bacon said, knowledge is power - and I see that as a power to change hearts and minds - or as you suggest, "human nature". Reading Aristotle and many others in the philosophic tradition has been amazing - and it wasn't as if I had no grounding at all, as I was raised a Catholic and so understood the Judeo-Christian ethical premises (a single sub-set of ethical schools of knowledge).
Knowledge is power.
From a purely theoretical perspective I understand your point/s, but reality is a harsh and brutal mistress, with no sense of mercy. And crying "It's not fair!" or "What about me?" won't cut it.
As for religious based ethics, try to consider the concept of a religion created by the murders of a political agitator, who realised they couldn't kill and idea by killing the person so then decided to own the idea and re-wrote it to suit their own purposes and quell the masses. The evidence is within their own book. All religion is politics, nothing else. They all carry their own prejudices and bias's, and all fail to understand human psychology. Just another ideology.
A key problem seems to be that successive governments seem happy to herd people towards support of a welfare state.
The left want to be the saviour.
The right want people hungry and willing to fight to be on top of each other to provide a willing and cheap labour force for businesses.
No Kate, in this current debate about child poverty, 'needs', (as I expect any budgetary service might confirm) are all the things we are daily bombarded with on tv ads..large tv screens, flash cars, fast food, etc..
Of course addressed to the wider population of consumers but we can hardly blame the impoverished for wanting to share in the good life, even if the loan sharks, and "no interest 26 weeks to pay" merchants will push them even further into impoverishment.
M86 "the end result is that we are paying non-working children to have children." I'm afraid i have a far harsher remedy and that is any female from the age of 16 to 45 who has two children, maybe 3 and has been on the benefits for more than six consecutive months or more than 9 months total in any one year needs to have her tubes tied.
Why? Because the Labour Govt has made being on welfare a lifestyle choice that many are choosing to adopt. A 30% increase in the number of people on JobSeeker since Labour took over, despite a 44% increase in the minimum wage and record low unemployment that means jobs are available for everyone that wants one.
A 30% increase in the number on the Sole Parents Benefit as well, as Labour has removed the requirement for single parents to even look for work.
If you keep people on welfare benefits rather than encouraging (or forcing those so disinclined) from actually working and progressing forward in life, then you are entrenching child poverty and worse, intergenerational welfare dependency.
Its not rocket science.
Hang on, why would I sign up to go work if I have kids? There'll be daycare fees, travel times, extra commuting costs and abatements of family tax credits that make going to work effectively a zero sum game for me, financially. Once you take into account the actual cost of simply being at a job, the smarter financial choice is to not work at all.
We aren't talking about middle managers here, we're talking people who realistically have a minimum wage role as their best option for finding work immediately. It's not a mystery that people aren't keen to swap 40 hours of time with their kids for something that actually works out worse for them financially.
That's your government failure, right there. It's abatements, it's tax thresholds, it's the WFFTC system, it's all things that a party that actually cared could change with their outright majority if they genuinely gave a damn. We can only assume, based on form to date, that they do in fact, not.
Yup, if you use a % below a median X, there will always be that % regardless of how much X is. The only way around that is by altering the demographics of that % - eg. if the people with children are all replaced at the bottom by the people without children, so making people like retirees a whole lot poorer. But someone has to be in that bottom %, and by default "living in poverty". Old people cant change being old, but people can stop having children they cannot afford to raise.
Good piece Brian.
Amazing that the same people that characterise the poor as being lazy and feckless (or financially incompetent) are often the same people baying for interest rate hikes and a loosening of the labour market to get unemployment up to a 'sustainable level'.
You can't have it both ways. If you are not prepared to provide a job for everyone that wants one (genuine full employment), then you need to look after the army of involuntarily unemployed people that get left behind. Whilst we have nearly 300,000 people unemployed or short of the hours they want, and a mean welfare state, then we will have child poverty and misery.
What is often missed is how toxic this inequality is for the whole population. Making sure our resources are shared more equally is good for everyone.
Jfoe you are correct in that a more equal sharing of resources is good for everyone
The disappointment for me is that Govt tax take has increased strongly over the last 5 years but despite this govt saying that child poverty was a top priority nothing much has changed. So why give more to a govt that doesnt deliver. Even the services that everyone gets have deteriorated - health and education by way of example with the biggest losers being the poor yet again
Time to give the money and decision making back to the community?
There are jobs for everyone. But people are choosing not to work because being on a benefit and pumping out kids is more financially lucrative than washing dishes or cleaning toilets for a living. So we import hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year to do those jobs, while Kiwi's just collect a benefit. And then when we wonder why they have so many kids, we give them even more money, so they have more kids to get that money, and the cycle continues. At no point does the "cycle of poverty" get broken by getting people into work, but instead we create intergenerational welfare dependency. Can already see it with the number of kids who don't turn up for school. Why bother, you don't need to go to school to get on the benefit when you turn 18.
That is a popular opinion for sure. But it is also spectacularly wrong - and pretty offensive to be honest. Take intergenerational welfare dependency for example. That turns out to be nonsense - it is rare for long-term unemployment to be repeated down through multiple generations - our eyes are drawn to the 'problem family' down the street, but they are evidently not representative. We import thousands of migrants, yes... to sleep in sheds in fields or grotty hostels in Queenstown and work for a pittance (net of their costs). Is it any wonder that someone 100km away from that work, living near their family support networks, doesn't opt for the same job? Come on - would you?
The taxes we've seen proposed in these areas were electoral soundbites and not really fit for purpose as credible tax proposals.
As much as I hate the idea of land taxes, it's really the only sensible answer I can see that doesn't introduce huge regional equity issues, or create stupid outcomes like taxing Kiwisaver capital gains like the TWG proposal suggested we do.
You'd get better outcomes by adjusting abatement thresholds, mandating that tax brackets are automatically indexed to inflation and anything that lets poor people who work keep more of their own money. People don't understand you have to sell the idea of getting up and going to work to people who don't want to do it, and make them want to do it. For that to work, it has to stack up and lead to a meaningful improvement in their quality of life, and our current system doesn't actually do that.
Its smple. The poor out breed the wealthy, they have more children, and they have their children younger.
low income first chld at @ 20, 2nd generation @ 20, third generation @ 20 = 3 generations in 60 years
high income first child @ 28, 2nd generation @ 28, third generation @ 28 = 3 generations in 84 years
No, it's not that simple - your implication is that it is a personal choice for those women who are impoverished. Far from it.
If we look at global female fertility rates, the countries/regions with the highest fertility rate per female are those with the highest level of unmet need for modern family planning methods. And yes, this unmet need is most prevalent in poorer countries/economies and women who are homeless/displaced are the most at risk/vulnerable.
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