The Ministry of Social Development published its "Child Poverty in New Zealand" report on Thursday, showing that 13 percent of children were living in material hardship between 2023 and 2024, up from 11 percent three years earlier. RNZ

Material hardship, in this context, means a household cannot afford basic necessities — things like fresh food, warm clothing, or keeping the house adequately heated. It is a measure of what families are going without, not just how low their income is.

Children's Commissioner Dr Claire Achmad said the government was failing to protect the rights of the roughly 170,000 children now living in poverty — a figure that rose by 47,500 from 2022. She described the report as shining "a light on what has become a national shame in our country."

The 13 percent rate sits marginally below the European Union average of 14 percent. But New Zealand was overtaken in the international rankings by Lithuania, Latvia, Italy, Portugal, and Cyprus — countries it had previously outperformed.

"New Zealand is a small, relatively rich country," Dr Achmad said. "It's inexcusable for us not to be at the right end of these rankings internationally."

Dr Achmad said material hardship means children are going hungry, living in cold conditions due to severe housing deprivation, and experiencing preventable respiratory illnesses that can lead to death. She warned that childhood poverty has a lifelong impact on health, education, and justice outcomes.

She described preventing child poverty as "absolutely urgent" because failing to do so means children miss out on their basic rights in childhood. She called poverty in New Zealand preventable but said it required bold cross-party action and clear policies prioritising children's basic rights to housing and health.

Earlier in the week of the report's release, Dr Achmad sent an open letter to party leaders calling for a commitment to a child poverty accord — a binding, cross-party agreement to fight inequality. She drew a parallel with infrastructure governance, saying: "If we can agree a national infrastructure plan, then surely we can do the same when it comes to the rights of our children and young people in New Zealand."

The call echoes the approach taken in the Child Poverty Reduction Act 2018, which set legal targets and reporting requirements. Dr Achmad is effectively asking party leaders to go further — to bind themselves to a commitment that survives electoral cycles, rather than treating child poverty as a politically contested area where targets shift each time government changes hands.

New Zealand sitting behind Lithuania, Latvia, Italy, Portugal, and Cyprus on material hardship complicates any narrative that positions Aotearoa as a strong performer on child wellbeing. The trajectory matters as much as the absolute figure: an 11-to-13-percent shift over three years, with an additional 47,500 children crossing into hardship, points to a worsening trend rather than a static problem.

MSD's "Child Poverty in New Zealand 2024" report is available for download as a PDF on the ministry's website. MSD The next full MSD Child Poverty Report is scheduled for the second quarter of 2025.

The broader context here is fiscal. The report lands at a point where Budget deliberations are already being shaped by financial pressure. The Children's Commissioner's open letter to party leaders sets a political test: whether child poverty can be removed from the partisan cycle and treated as infrastructure-grade national policy, or whether it remains a contested space where the figures are debated rather than acted on.

The 47,500 increase since 2022 and the overtaking by five countries in the rankings give Dr Achmad's call for urgency concrete numbers behind it. Whether party leaders respond to the open letter, and whether a child poverty accord gains any traction in the House, will be a test of the political appetite for the kind of cross-party framework she is seeking.