We find that one-third of non-work households are poor in all twelve months of the year and that 59 percent experience poverty in more than six months of the year. Thus, the duration of poverty for non-working households is very high (see left bar in Figure 12). In contrast, for in-work households, the picture is very different (see right bar in Figure 12): just 1 percent of these households experience poverty in all twelve months of the year (>6 months: 6 percent), while 14 percent of the in-work households experience poverty between one and six months. Furthermore, four out of five working households (80 percent) do not experience any spell of poverty during the year, a circumstance shared by just 15 percent of non-work households. 29 Another noteworthy finding is that while in March 2013 7.0 percent of in-work households were identified as poor, 20 percent had to deal with poverty for at least for one month in the preceding year. This indicates that for a significant share of households, income is not persistently high enough to keep them above the poverty threshold throughout the year. This finding is mirrored in a study by Pacheco and Plum (2019) on the New Zealand low pay sector: the authors show that the share of workers affected by low pay for at least one month in the year is substantially higher compared to the share of low-paid worker in a specific month. Figure 12. Poverty duration 100% 1% 5% 14% 33% 75% 26% 50% 80% 26% 25% 15% 0% Non-work In-work Number of months in poverty 0 1-6 7-11 12 Source: IDI 2019. Working threshold as defined in Section 3. Poverty duration based on number of months below the threshold (as defined in Section 3) over the period April 2012 to March 2013 (inclusive). These findings are in line with the international literature. For example, Halleröd et al. (2015) construct monthly employment profiles over a three-year observation window for 22 European countries, using survey data from the Study on Income and Living Conditions, and then explore the relationship between these 36-month observation profiles with the inwork poverty rate in the third observation year. Their conclusion is that: “All over Europe, the poverty risk among the core labour force – that is, individuals who were full-time employed without interruption during the whole 36-month observation window – is very low” (2015, p. 482). 29 Page 42