Stats NZ

Correction to child poverty, and household income and housing costs statistics year ended June 2020

Corrected child poverty statistics have been published, and corrected household income and housing-costs statistics will be published next Thursday, on 29 April 2021, Stats NZ said today.

The corrections applied have resulted in changes to the published statistics for the year ended June 2020; however, the statistics do not impact previously published years.

“After the corrections are applied, all nine key measures of child poverty remain trending downwards across the two years since the year ended June 2018,” work, wealth, and wellbeing statistics senior manager Sean Broughton said.

Household income and housing-costs statistics were initially published on 16 February 2021, and child poverty statistics on 23 February 2021. As these corrections have impacted all published statistics in these releases, we have updated all published estimates and tables.

Work to confirm the sample selection weights for the household economic survey for the year ended June 2021 identified a processing error in the weighting methodology resulting in the published estimates being incorrect.

To ensure the accuracy of the corrected data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) completed an independent quality assurance process which found that the error in the weighting has been identified and corrected.

The Treasury have processed data with the corrected weights through the Tax and Welfare Analysis (TAWA) Model. This subsequent process identified several respondents incorrectly reporting the superannuation payments they received, resulting in double counting their income from superannuation, which has also been resolved in this corrected release.

The corrections resulted in a change to the median income for the year ended June 2020, which is used to provide the thresholds for child poverty reporting. The median equivalised disposable household income for the year ended June 2020 before housing costs are deducted reduced from $42,486 to $41,472. After housing costs are deducted, it reduced from $32,579 to $31,717.

The corrections to the reported child poverty rates for the year ended June 2020 resulted in the significance of the movement in rates changing, with measure (a) and measure (g) now showing statistically significant decreases over the two years since the year ended June 2018.

The corrections have not impacted the significance of any measure for the one-year change from the year ended June 2019.

Stats NZ will publish a technical note with full details of the corrected data, an explanation of how the errors occurred, and how those errors were treated, on 29 April 2021.

Stats NZ is an open and transparent organisation and corrects errors as soon as practicable, using rigorous processes to check data before publication.

Stats NZ reviews any error to reduce and mitigate future risks. The lessons learned from this error will be used to guide future quality assurance processes.

Stats NZ regrets the error and apologises for any inconvenience caused.

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