Growing Up in New Zealand Policy Brief. Measuring the Economic Environment: What resources are available to children in their first 1000 days?

Strong and consistent associations between the experience of poverty in early life and poor outcomes across the life course have been well documented in recent decades, for many populations living in a range of different socio-economic and political contexts. Because of this much resource and political energy has been invested in attempts to reduce the impact of poverty, especially in early life. In New Zealand there has been a recent focus on finding new solutions to reduce the high rates of poverty that particularly affect children, as well as to address the inequities that are seen in both rates of exposure to poverty and the multiple poor outcomes previously demonstrated as being associated with early exposure to poverty. There are many ways to define child poverty and there is no one standard way to do so.

In this briefing we provide some specific examples of the longitudinal information available as part of the Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal cohort study to measure the components of economic capital (commonly used alone to assess poverty), as well as family focussed physical, social and human capitals, all of which collectively contribute to a family’s capacity to support their child’s early development and wellbeing.