Children living in households with severe material hardship in New Zealand
Year ended June 2013–2025, % of children
| Year ended June | % of children |
|---|---|
| 2007 | None |
| 2008 | None |
| 2009 | None |
| 2010 | None |
| 2011 | None |
| 2012 | None |
| 2013 | 7.7% |
| 2014 | 8.4% |
| 2015 | 8.6% |
| 2016 | 4.6% |
| 2017 | 6.7% |
| 2018 | 5.8% |
| 2019 | 5.8% |
| 2020 | 4.6% |
| 2021 | 4.9% |
| 2022 | 4% |
| 2023 | 5.6% |
| 2024 | 5.5% |
| 2025 | 6% |
Definitions
Income: This data refers to the equivalised disposable household income. It is the household income divided by a factor that takes into account household size and composition. This is to allow living standards to be compared across households.
DEP-17 score: The DEP-17 index focuses on the low living standards end of the spectrum and includes questions about ‘enforced lack of essentials’, ‘economised, cut back, or delayed purchases a lot’, ‘in arrears more than once in last 12 months’, and ‘financial stress and vulnerability’. For more information: https://www.stats.govt.nz/methods/measuring-child-poverty-material-hardship#appendix2
'Material hardship' is defined as having a DEP-17 score of six or more, while 'Severe material hardship' is defined as having a DEP-17 score of nine or more.
Housing costs: Total housing costs consist of expenditure on mortgage payments, rent payments, property rates payments, and payments associated with building-related insurance.
AHC: After housing costs.
BHC: Before housing costs.
For more information
https://www.stats.govt.nz/methods/measuring-child-poverty-concepts-and-definitions
https://datainfoplus.stats.govt.nz/item/nz.govt.stats/9cd757c6-5e41-43e5-aa24-734c73a32989
Limitations of the data
Stats NZ emphasises the need to look at the general trend over time and caution against reaching definitive conclusions from reported year-on-year changes.
Due to its relatively small sample size prior for some years, the underlying data source was not able to deliver robust results when more precision is required in a given year.
Data provided by
Dataset name
Household Income and Living Survey: Child poverty statistics Year ended June 2025
Webpage:
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/child-poverty-statistics-year-ended-june-2025/
How to find the data
At URL provided, select 'Child poverty statistics: Year ended June 2025 – CSV – corrected'.
Figure.nz appended the CSV files into one Excel file for processing purposes.
Import & extraction details
File as imported: Household Income and Living Survey: Child poverty statistics Year ended June 2025
From the dataset Household Income and Living Survey: Child poverty statistics Year ended June 2025, this data was extracted:
- Sheet: cp-national-datafile-csv
- Range:
D2:D856 - Provided: 855 data points
This data forms the table Child Poverty - Children living in households with low income and material hardship 2013–2025.
Dataset originally released on:
February 26, 2026
About this dataset
Child poverty statistics provide estimates of low income and material hardship rates for measures listed in the Child Poverty Reduction Act 2018.
Purpose of collection
Statistics in this release are used as baseline rates by Government to set 3- and 10-year targets for reducing child poverty for the three primary measures specified in the Child Poverty Reduction Act 2018.
Method of collection/Data provider
The Household Income and Living Survey (HILS) was established to replace the Household Economic Survey (HES) from July 2024.
The HILS, from which these latest poverty rates were estimated, was conducted between July 2024 and June 2025. Households were asked to report income and housing costs expenditure for the 12 months prior to interview. This means that for some households, income refers to income received in the 2023/2024 year.