Figure 9. Income sources by working and poverty status
Average share of household income
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
Couple without
children
Couple with
child(rent)
Wages & salaries
One parent with Two or more
child(ren)
family household
Benefits
Pension
WfF and AS
One-person
household
in-work poor
in-work non-poor
in-work poor
in-work non-poor
in-work poor
in-work non-poor
in-work poor
in-work non-poor
in-work poor
in-work non-poor
in-work poor
in-work non-poor
40%
Other multiperson household
Other
Source: IDI 2019. Notes: ‘WfF’ is Working for Families tax credit; ‘AS’ is Accommodation Supplement. Other sources of
income = withholding payments, student allowance, paid parental leave and ACC claims.
Benefit receipt
In this sub-section, we examine the relationship between benefit receipt (accounting for all benefits
paid by Ministry of Social Development) and in-work poverty. Table 12 shows that 66.1 percent of
non-work households have at least one adult member who receives benefits. This figure falls to 11.6
percent of in-work households. When we divide the latter group between poor and non-poor
households, we see that about 28.7 percent of in-work poor households have at least one member
who receives benefits – substantially above the figure for in-work non-poor households (10.3
percent).
Table 12. Benefit receipt by working and poverty status
Non-poor
Poor
Total
Non-work
57.2%
70.7%
66.1%
In-work
10.3%
28.7%
11.6%
Source: IDI 2019. Notes: Working and poverty status as defined in Section 3 (sample of 874,797 households).
We next analyse benefit duration based on the number of months (in the time period April 2012 to
March 2013) where at least one adult member of the household received benefits (Figure 10). While
84 percent of in-work non-poor households do not receive any benefits at all within the year, this is
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