Ten going on sixteen

Ten Going On Sixteen is a profile of young New Zealanders in the transition years put out by the Ministry of Youth Development.   The data was collected by Victoria University’s Youth Connectedness Project from 2006 to 2008.

"The research was designed to test the hypothesis that “connectedness” – to family, peers, school and community – is predictive of subsequent health and wellbeing of young people. The hypothesis was confirmed, with “connectedness to family and school” most strongly predictive of subsequent happiness, self sense of identity. "

While the report online is not particularly detailed (the spirituality section is very skimpy) is does highlight some interesting factors about young people, things that it might be useful for youth group leaders to know about. 

It shows that in general most children are happy with their parents and friends - boys in particular say they get on well with their families.   Girls tend to be happier when they're in the younger age range and grow less happy from the time they're 12.  Boys for the most part stay happy.  

In regard to the girls' decrease in happiness, this is mostly put down to the onset of puberty.  "Given that the average age that girls have their first period is 12-13, the explanation is likely to lie in the interaction between pubertal stage and social and cultural expectations.  The onset of puberty has already been linked to increase in depression and increased rates of self harm among adolescent girls.  In societies where expectations of girls are high, the levels of stress and anxiety among young women seem also to be higher."

There are a small group in both sexes who say they are sad most of the time around the time they're ten years old.   However, the report doesn't show whether these particular children had specific reasons to be sad.   Broken family relationships barely come into the report. 

It was a slight surprise to me to see how early many of the children are starting to drink alcohol. 

• Drinking becomes a normal behaviour for young people between the ages of 10 and 16.
• Between the ages of 12 and 14, the percentage of boys who say they drink alcohol on one or two days a month or more doubles - from 16 percent at age 12 to 35 per cent at age 14. 
• For girls the increase is even higher, from 13 per cent at age 12 to 44 per cent at age 14.
• At age 14, more girls than boys report drinking, but by age 16, the boys have caught up.
• At age 15, over half of the young people in the survey say that they drink alcohol on one or two days a month or more.
• At age 16, 71 per cent of boys and 66 per cent of girls say they drink alcohol one or two days a month or more.
• Around three per cent of the young people in this survey are ‘serious’drinkers, drinking on ten days a month or more.

The question has to be asked: where do they get the alcohol from?   

The survey was taken from around 50% European children, 30% Maori, and 20% of other ethnicities. 

The Internet generation isn't what you thought

Spiegel Online International has an interesting three page article by Manfred Dworschak about young people online which I'd suggest all those who are interested in how young people use the Net should read.  

It seems that while the current generation uses social media a good deal it doesn't regard being online as a top priority.   Meeting friends face-to-face is at least as important, if not more so - and much of what they do online is the same as they do off.   The Internet is no big deal to them: it's always been there, so they don't have any sense of excitement about it.

This is a bit of a surprise to many educators - and media pundits - who'd claimed that this generation would be the ones most savvy about the Net.   As it turns out, they're not particularly savvy at all (though of course there are exceptions).   Given a task to do on Google, many secondary students don't actually know how to use it well to find information.   They go for a scattershot approach and often miss the very things they're looking for.

A very small percentage will blog (the Internet is awash with abandoned blogs, many of which barely survive the first post), but it's not regarded as something they do.

They appear to be online a good deal, but in fact when they are online, they're often doing other things as well - like texting. 

Dworschak's article covers a lot of other ground, considers a number of studies that have been done on the subject, and questions the way we've thought about the Net and young people.    We may have to rethink the strategies!

Update stats relating to Internet access and usage

Statistics NZ reports today that:

Mobile access plays an increasingly important role as New Zealanders use the Internet both at home and away from home. In over half of households with the Internet in 2009, a laptop or a hand-held computer was used to access the Internet at home, five times more than in 2006.

25% of Internet users in 2009 used mobile phones or wireless hot-spots to access the Internet while they were away from home. This compared with 14% of users in 2006.

“The increase may be because laptops are much more affordable now, and wireless connection technology is increasingly a standard function for laptops, Hand-held devices, and mobile phones,” Statistics NZ manager Gary Dunnet said.

There are still rural areas without broadband (rural in NZ Stats terms is an area with a population of less than 300). But even in more populated areas, cost is still a factor when it comes to using broadband.

At December 2009, almost half of New Zealand households not planning to get digital TV in the next 12 months cited cost as a reason for remaining on analogue broadcasting. This was followed by over 40 percent of households who stated they simply do not want it. {Nothing like a bit of the reactionary!] The move to digital TV by New Zealanders will allow analogue television to be switched off in the future. This will free up spectrum for other uses such as mobile broadband.

Over half of New Zealanders indicated they would vote online in general and local elections. Younger people and those earning higher incomes were more likely to vote online. These groups also have higher proportions of Internet users than other groups.

Feeling a little crowded lately?

Statistics New Zealand has just announced that visitor arrivals to New Zealand were 2.501 million in the June 2010 year, the first time 2.5 million has been surpassed.
"This milestone was almost reached in 2008, but the global economic downturn contributed to a decline in visitor numbers after a peak of 2.497 million in the March 2008 year," Population Statistics manager Bridget Hamilton-Seymour said.

The 2 million visitor mark was reached in the November 2002 year, and the 1 million mark in the April 1992 year.

Visitors from Australia accounted for 1.119 million or 45 percent of all visitors in the June 2010 year. A further 25 percent of visitors came from four countries; the United Kingdom (248,900), the United States (194,000), China (105,200), and Japan (83,600).

Visitor arrivals in the June month were 145,800, up 8 percent from June 2009. There were more visitors from Australia, and visitor numbers from China, Japan, and Korea recovered after the H1N1 pandemic affected arrivals from those countries in June 2009. Fewer visitors arrived from the United Kingdom and the United States.

Statistics NZ also notes that net migration continues to decrease.

Net permanent and long-term migration (arrivals minus departures) was 100 (rounded figure) in June 2010, the lowest monthly figure since the series briefly went below zero in November 2008. This series has been decreasing steadily since January 2010 (1,800). On an unadjusted basis, there were 500 fewer arrivals of non-New Zealand citizens and 900 more departures of New Zealand citizens compared with June 2009.

The annual net migration gain was 16,500 in the June 2010 year, down from the recent peak of 22,600 in the January 2010 year. The main inflows of migrants were from the United Kingdom, India, and China. There was a net outflow of 15,900 migrants to Australia, well down from 28,700 in the June 2009 year.

Face to face

Two different articles from The Guardian, both relating in some way to mental health.

Firstly, How to beat depression - without drugs, looks at the work of Dr Steve Ilardi, and his book, The Depression Cure: the six-step programme to beat depression without drugs. Dr Ilardi isn't saying anything particularly new, but he does note one thing especially:

Social connectedness is important to Ilardi. In The Depression Cure, he argues that the brain mistakenly interprets the pain of depression as an infection. Thinking that isolation is needed, it sends messages to the sufferer to "crawl into a hole and wait for it all to go away". This can be disastrous because what depressed people really need is the opposite: more human contact.

Which is why social connectedness forms one-sixth of his "lifestyle based" cure for depression. The other five elements are meaningful activity (to prevent "ruminating" on negative thoughts); regular exercise; a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids; daily exposure to sunlight; and good quality, restorative sleep.

And social connectedness is the focus of the second article:

the lack of face-to-face interaction can make the world wide web a lonely place sometimes. But fear not, for not only can you use the web to order your takeaway and DVD, now you can also use it to order the friend you share them with.

Rent a Friend, which already offers its services in the US and Canada, is being launched in the UK this week to give people the chance to overcome their British reserve and hire someone to keep them company. Unlike the myriad dating websites, which cater for everything from a long-term relationship to a no-strings fling, Rent a Friend advertises itself as "strictly platonic", while also emphasising that it is not an escort agency.

So face-to-face contact may be coming back into its own.

The return of the multi-generational household

The following paragraph indicates an interesting trend in family households, which may also be increasing in New Zealand.

The number of Americans living in two-adult-generation households grew from 28 million in 1980 to 49 million in 2008, with 25% of Baby Boomers expecting to live with their parents again; and the recession has accelerated the trend. Supporting both parents and children takes a major emotional and financial toll, with the average yearly cost of supporting an aging parent at $5,534 and the yearly cost of supporting adult children at $7,660. But 76% of those helping a relative say they enjoy it, and 54% have bonded with their loved one more than they anticipated.

The first sentence is a bit unclear, but basically we're talking here about a member of the grandparent generation moving back in with one of their children and that child's family. Or the three-generational group moving into a different house together.

We were blessed when our children were growing up to have my mother living with us. She had her own living area upstairs, her own bathroom and a small kitchen. The enormous benefits this gave to our children are too many to count. It was also great to have a built-in babysitter (!)

However, this won't work in every situation, and it can be an awful burden for some. Still, my intuition is that it's healthier for the older person to live with their family. Even older people living in their own homes are healthier than older people living in rest homes. People who go into rest homes seem to deteriorate faster than those who don't.

It turns out my intuition is backed up in the report the paragraph at the top of this post relates to. One of the findings was:

Older adults who live alone are less healthy and they more often feel sad or depressed than their counterparts who live with a spouse or with others. These correlations stand up even after controlling for demographic factors such as gender, race, age, income and education.

The report is called: The Return of the Multi-Generational Household. It is presented by the PewResearch Centre, and came out in March 2010.

Photo by Dianna, on Flickr.com

Prostitution in New Zealand

As usual, it seems, New Zealand has followed a trend only to find that everyone else is starting to change their mind....

Family First NZ says that the Auckland police admission that underage prostitution is on the increase in the city is yet more evidence that the National government must immediately repeal the flawed prostitution law. “This latest review has found girls as young as 12 prostituting themselves in central Auckland, and a similar investigation in South Auckland in 2008 found 16 teenagers aged between 13 and 16 prostituting themselves on the streets of South Auckland,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

“Politicians who voted for this ideologically flawed bill which decriminalised prostitution should hang their heads in shame as they have normalized the behaviour amongst at-risk teenagers. They have also condemned more men and women to this destructive industry. Prostitution is not the oldest profession – it is the oldest oppression.

And in an interesting reversal of a trend:

Bulgaria is only the latest European country to shift its approach to prostitution. Finland last year made it illegal to buy sex from women brought in by traffickers, and Norway is on the verge of imposing an outright ban on purchasing sex. Even in Amsterdam, the city government has proposed shutting down more than a quarter of the famed storefront brothels in the red-light district. And in the Czech Republic and the three Baltic republics, attempts at legalization similar to the Bulgarian one have been turned back.

Fear.Less

In a recent post Seth Godin points to a new online magazine called Fear.Less. It's well written, has half a dozen interesting contributors from a variety of fields, and can be downloaded, or read on your browser, or printed out. All for free.

The magazine promotes itself this way: fear.less is a free online magazine that empowers people through unique stories of overcoming fear. From entrepreneurs, business leaders, artists and scientists to survivors of extreme experiences, these stories demonstrate the hidden potential we have to confront our fears and come out victorious. Fear.less is our answer to an emergency.

Okay, so why am I mentioning it here, since there's no particular Christian connection in it? Well, firstly in each case the contributors discuss overcoming a fear or failure in their life that could easily have debilitated them for the future. Secondly, it's a biblical principle that fear is something to be overcome, or it will be your master.

Thirdly, it's a prime example of what magazines might look like in the future. I don't think that future is here yet; not quite. Paper magazines are still rampant, even though large numbers of them are losing money, and increasingly they have more ads than content. (fear.less has more content than ads.) Depending on the state of the Internet in the next ten/twenty years, this could be the way magazines go. Far more economical to produce, environmentally more friendly (I think!) and accessible to larger numbers of people - or just to a small group that wants to read about those particular issues.

Check it out. You can read it online in your browser, or download it or.... And it's just as classy-looking as anything you'll find on your newsstands.

Good and Evil

Umair Haque has written an article entitled, The Case for Being Disruptively Good.

In it he discusses the way in which businesses who used to get away with bad practice are now far more exposed than they used to be, due to the information age - news travels fast, in other words. Purely from a shareholding viewpoint, he notes: being a good guy pays. The best corporate citizens list, which includes Hewlett-Packard, Intel, General Mills, I.B.M. and Kimberly-Clark, had a total return on shareholder value of 2.37 percent over three years. But the 30 worst had a negative 7.38 percent return".

But this is far more than an article about shareholders. It's about the fact that big businesses that are thriving are doing so more because they have decided to follow 'good' practices more than 'evil' ones. But even those who are doing good vary in the extent to which they're doing good.

He lists a ladder with five steps and shows how various well-known companies are learning the ropes of doing good: Pepsi's on the bottom rung, having done a "marginal bit of good"; Nestle is on the next rung, having got itself a 'black eye' for not being as open and honest as it claimed (thanks for Facebook!).

Google's just got itself back on the third rung by pulling out of China, avoiding the compromises that would have been required of it, if it had stayed. Apple's on the fourth rung - though Haque doesn't seem convinced it'll stay there, and Wal Mart (surprise!) is on the fifth rung due to its Sustainability Index which 'lays down new rules for every single supplier in its vast, globe-spanning ecosystem.'

Haque doesn't see anyone on the top rung as yet, but is waiting.

The ladder image is only part of what he has to say. Check out the rest: the historic viewpoint, the revolutions, the changes.

The old are taking over

The issues of Ageing - or Aging, as blogger insists it's spelt - are often a topic of posts on this blog, and I've just come across an article in the Guardian in which ageing is discussed (partly in a tongue-in-cheek style) by Zoe Williams. She blames election time on the 'sudden interest' in the topic, but that aside, there are some points to note in her piece that are relevant to the NZ scene - election time or no. Some quotes:

....it is an unarguable fact that the population is getting older; the impact is already being felt in dementia cases, which at 822,000 are 17% higher than previously estimated.

It is assumed that over-65s live in some condition of infirmity, when the most recent Health Survey for ­England ­suggests that the opposite is the case – the most commonly declared state of health, in any of the five age groups between 65 and death, is "no reported problems" (and that includes men!). So, as life expectancy rises and health improves at the early stages of ­pensionable age, ever more people will be ­working well into their 60s – ­transforming the equation of who's a burden and who isn't.

...a) there are more over-65s in this country than there are under-18s; and b) pensioners, for all their rude health, do cost more on account of their pensions – in 2005/06, £15,024 was spent on the average pensioner, £9,454 on the average child and £6,469 on the average person of working age.

Marriage and more

The latest statistics on marriage, civil unions and divorce in New Zealand show a declining rate of divorce, and an increasing number of marriages over the past decade.
And while the marriage rate has retained its demand and relevance, the demand for civil unions has been negligible.
Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ, notes: “The civil unions legislation has proved to be a complete white elephant, despite the claims by the previous government that it would supposedly strengthen human rights and support the choices of apparently 300,000 people who were not married but lived in stable relationships.”
According to Statistics NZ data released today, there have been only 1,646 civil unions registered between April 2005 and March 2009 . These comprised 1,330 same-sex unions (594 male and 736 female) (80%), 312 opposite-sex unions and just four transfers from marriage.

So what are the actual stats for the marriages and divorces - have we reason to celebrate? Here's what NZ Stats says:

• DIVORCES; The Family Court granted 9,700 divorces in 2008, slightly below the annual average of 10,000 for the last decade. About one-third of New Zealanders who married in 1983 had divorced before their silver wedding anniversary (25 years).
• MARRIAGES: There were 21,900 marriages registered in 2008, compared with 21,500 in 2007. The increase was due to more first marriages, up from 14,400 to 14,800. The number of remarriages remained at 7,100, the same as in 2007.
• MARRIAGE RATE: The general marriage rate (marriages per 1,000 unmarried adults) was 13.7 in 2008, down from 15.6 in 1998. The latest rate is less than one-third of the peak level of 45.5 per 1,000 recorded in 1971.
• CIVIL UNIONS: There were 327 civil unions in 2008: 256 same-sex unions (111 male and 145 female) and 71 opposite-sex unions. Up to 31 December 2008, eight civil unions had been dissolved.
  

Ageing population

As a follow-up to my post on Monday about the elderly in our communities and congregations, I note the following projected stats:
We are in a time of rapid population ageing. In New Zealand, by 2030, for the group aged 65 to 74, numbers will double from 276,000 in 2006, to 559,000. By 2030, it is estimated that the numbers of those over 85 will almost treble, from 58,000 today to 150,0001 Treasury (2006) has also calculated that the ratio of the young to the old is transposing, and after 2020 we will have more people over age 64 than under age 15.
As I said the other day, this is no time to be ignoring children and young people. It is, however, a time to be thinking about how we are going to minister to increasing numbers of people who are over 60?

Transitions from work to retirement

Sylvia Dixon has produced a study for NZ Stats that looks at changes in the way people now head into retirement. Whereas in the past there was a tendency for a definite cut-off point from work and a sudden move into retirement, now people tend more and more to transition. This is another aspect of the way in which older people regard their lives differently from their forebears.

Dixon's abstract is as follows:

Survey responses indicate that the majority of working-aged New Zealanders would prefer to make a gradual transition from work to retirement, rather than move abruptly from full-time work to non-employment. This study describes the employment patterns and transitions of people who were aged in their 60s and moved from employment to inactivity during the 1999–2007 period, using longitudinal data from the Linked Employer-Employee Dataset.

Four different types of transition to retirement were defined and the relative frequency of each explored. We find that phased transitions, involving either part-time work or a number of transitions in and out of employment before the final exit, were far more common than discrete transitions from full-time work to non-employment. Men were more likely than women to take a traditional path from work to retirement. Although there were some significant variations in the frequency of different work-to-retirement paths across major industries, phased transitions were more prevalent than traditional transitions in all major industries.

International evidence shows that phased retirements are also common in other countries with similar labour markets. The literature suggests that many older adults retire gradually, but some are constrained in their labour supply choices and are unable to achieve the flexible transitions to retirement they would prefer.

Some new stats from NZ Stats

Some new stats from NZ Stats.

The following highlights are from the National Family and Household Projections 2006-2031. The projections assume medium fertility, medium mortality, and long-term annual net migration of 10,000:

• The number of families is projected to reach 1.44 million by 2031, an increase of 269,000 (23 percent) from an estimated 1.17 million families at 30 June 2006.
• Most of the growth in families will be in couple without children families, which will overtake two-parent families to become the most common family type by 2008.
• The number of households is projected to reach 2.09 million by 2031, an increase of 535,000 (34 percent) from an estimated 1.55 million households at 30 June 2006.
• One-person households are projected to increase by 71 percent, from 363,000 in 2006 to 619,000 in 2031.
• The average size of households will decrease to 2.4 people by 2031, from 2.6 people in 2006.
• The numbers of families and households will grow faster than the population, which is projected to increase by 22 percent between 2006 and 2031.

The italicised points are particularly interesting: more couples without children than with children: what will happen to all the teachers and schools?
A big increase in one-person households – and loneliness.
Does it seem likely churches' focus may have to shift from ministering to the young to ministering to older people?

Older Workers

By 2012/13 New Zealand’s labour force is forecast to rise from 2.25 million to 2.38 million – close to a 6 percent increase.
Within this labour force, the number of workers aged 55 or older will have grown by 25% – an additional 100,000 individuals.
However, those aged 25-54 will have increased by only 2.5% or 28,000 individuals.
That means employers will have to shift their focus from young to old in order to maintain a viable workforce, says Mercer in a recently released report entitled Workplace 2012.

The percentage of workers aged 55+ will increase from 18 percent to 21 percent – more than half a million individuals.

The percentage of workers aged 25-54 will decrease from 65 percent to 62 percent.

The participation rate of workers aged 20-44 will decrease

The participation rate of workers aged 55-59 will increase – from 79.6 percent to 82.4percent

The participation rate of workers aged 60-64 will increase – from 67.1 percent to 75 percent.

What will this mean for the way the church looks at mission, workplace chaplaincy, care of older people in employment? Will youth groups take less focus in the church, and 'older' groups take more?

The abuse has to stop

Muriel Newman writes in her weekly NZ Centre for Political Research newsletter:
For years, governments have shied away from getting to the heart of the child abuse crisis because that means tackling the incentives in legislation that is leading to increasingly higher rates of family breakdown - especially amongst Maori families which feature disproportionately in the child abuse statistics. If marriage leads to a safer family environment for children, then the census data on the rates of marriage amongst Maori and non-Maori shows a very worrying trend: in 2001, while 79.5 percent of partnered non-Maori couples were married only 58.8 percent of Maori couples were married. And by 2006 the rates of marriage had fallen to 78.6 percent for non-Maori and 54 percent for Maori.

Unless the incentives in the domestic purposes benefit are changed to stop encouraging single parenting, all the good intentions in the world will not halt the rise in child abuse. And with the problem being an intergenerational one, whereby children raised in fragmented families and abusive homes will tend to repeat that behaviour on their own children, addressing this problem must surely rank at the highest end of the new government’s priority list.

And John Sax adds, in an article called, Redefining Compassion:

Drugs, alcohol and poverty are generally purported to be the breeding ground for child abuse but the statistics also hold another common element. Global social scientists tell us that on average there is a 1400 percent increase in child abuse and a 1600 percent increase in child murder when children are brought up in a relationship other than marriage – live-in boyfriends, stepdads, de facto relationships and so on.
Unfortunately we find ourselves now in a society where social policy - as compassionate and heartfelt as it is - not only discourages the very unions that could provide the safest environment for children, but, by its very nature, encourages a cycle of generational poverty, and drug and alcohol abuse.

Voluntary

According to Statistics New Zealand nearly a million people volunteer for a charity or worthy cause every year. Volunteering is worth $3.31 billion to New Zealand, and the combined efforts of charities and volunteers contribute 4.9% to the country’s gross domestic product. This collaboration helps New Zealand to be a healthier, safer and more successful country. Volunteers donate 270 million unpaid hours each year, and this makes it possible for over 97,000 Kiwi charities and not-for-profit projects to survive.

The recently founded 'Good' magazine has got together with Intrepid Travel to encourage volunteers within the country. There'll be awards once a year (and a prize). Their aim is to make NZ the country with the most volunteers per head of population in the world.

More on TheLowdown.co.nz

The New Zealand Ministry of Health won a gold EFFIE in the SOCIAL MARKETING / PUBLIC SERVICE category for TheLowdown.co.nz website, which is part of its National Depression Initiative created to help young New Zealanders understand and recover from depression.

The aim of the website is to reduce the impact of depression on youth by encouraging them to seek help. Young people are notorious for not going to GPs or using other support services. They are difficult to engage, even with issues that interest them, let alone with an issue that they don’t understand and that still carries a social stigma.

One in seven young Kiwis will experience serious depression over the next 12 months, a condition closely linked to suicidal behaviour.

TheLowdown.co.nz is a leading edge multimedia website where musicians and celebrities shared their experiences of depression. A place where youth can learn about depression, take a self-test, listen to NZ music, talk to their peers via a message board and receive professional support via free text messaging and email support services.

Brian van den Hurk, DraftFCB General Manager, says, “With the sobering statistics for youth depression and suicide it is crucial that we help young people to deal with and recover from depression. TheLowdown.co.nz has been created for them to get help as quickly as possible. If they can develop their skills in coping with what life throws at them, they can have more control over their future."

Details from a Scoop report

The Value of Family

Family First in NZ (which is not a political party, but an organisation focused on strengthening the state of families in NZ) has just brought out a report: The Value of Family - Fiscal Benefits of Marriage and Reducing Family Breakdown in New Zealand.

The following is quoted from the Executive Summary:

Measuring the costs of family breakdown and decreasing marriage rates raises many challenges (partly due to the paucity of empirical research on influences on family form in New Zealand). Failing to consider and debate these costs would, however, mean that we would have little chance of understanding some of the most important issues facing New Zealand’s most vulnerable families.

While divorce may on occasion help avoid negative family outcomes (such as in high confl ict situations), international research suggests that the private costs of divorce and unmarried childbearing include increased risks of poverty, mental illness, infant mortality, physical illness, juvenile delinquency and adult criminality, sexual abuse and other forms of family violence, economic hardship, substance abuse, and educational failure.

In this report emphasis is given to the effect of family breakdown and decreasing marriage rates on poverty among families with children. Family breakdown and decreasing marriage rates also lead to social costs by increasing the fiscal costs to taxpayers through increasing take-up of government programmes (e.g., the number of children and adults in need of income assistance) and through infl uencing the social problems facing communities – such as crime and poor health outcomes. Both of these
categories of taxpayer cost are considered in this report.

On Abortion

While New Zealanders wait for the outcome of Justice Forrest Miller's criticism of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, a new study commissioned by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good has concluded that government social spending and economic conditions do more to reduce abortions than legal strategies such as parental consent laws. You can read a summary of this here.

Mary Nelson writes:

Joseph Wright (Penn State University) and Michael Bailey's (Georgetown University) examined the dramatic drop in abortions in the 1990s. The results are significant. States that spend more generously on nutritional supplement programs, for example, could see up to 37 percent lower abortion rates. Other factors such as cutting welfare more slowly and higher male employment rates had a 20 to 29 percent reduction rate.

The negative approaches don't seem to work. Welfare caps on children born while on welfare and laws requiring parental consent for minors have only negligible impact. The study concludes that "pro-family policies reduce abortions."

Both Republicans and Democrats should take note. The authors estimate that increased welfare payments and less Medicaid funding for abortions could lower the current abortion rate by 37 percent.

Perhaps the New Zealand Government might take note: not caring for young families and not helping men and fathers in particular to work, is a dangerous social policy.