The detriment of dependency? –Issues surrounding youth and welfare
Social policies to alleviate problems are always approached from a certain perspective. When tackling the ‘issue’ of welfare dependency, Paula Bennett (2012, n.p) takes a neo-liberal standpoint. Essential assumptions for her framing of the issue include individuals as free agents lacking a work ethic, which the Social Security bill hopes to combat. However, this is a limited portrayal of the issue. Alternate views such as those of feminists and anti-racists can extract different depictions of the same situation, hence produce differing policy solutions.
What is the key understanding of the ‘problem’ identified in the text?
As Bennett phrases it, the issue is the current welfare system that lets people fall into a multigenerational chain of dependency. Welfare dependency creates adults who are insufficient to work and lacking in skills, and the children growing up in reliant households will pick up the same behaviours and practices, hence falling into the same sequence. Dependency therefore drains confidence and goals, contributing to its destructive nature. Because it is intergenerational, the bill has a strong focus on helping youth and teen parents to break this trend. …show more content…
Despite targeting youth, Maori spend around a year longer on welfare than non-Maori on average. (Marie, Fergusson & Boden 2011, 20) Since colonial times there has been a disruption of the original Maori ways of life, the ramifications of which contribute to family instabilities, social, economic and mental problems today. Therefore anti-racist theorists form values that welfare is distributed unevenly due to contextual issues, as 15% of New Zealand’s population is Maori, yet they make up 33% of those on the unemployment benefit (Marie, Fergusson & Boden 2011, 15). These challenges make it more difficult for Maori to enter the
Social policies to alleviate problems are always approached from a certain perspective. When tackling the ‘issue’ of welfare dependency, Paula Bennett (2012, n.p) takes a neo-liberal standpoint. Essential assumptions for her framing of the issue include individuals as free agents lacking a work ethic, which the Social Security bill hopes to combat. However, this is a limited portrayal of the issue. Alternate views such as those of feminists and anti-racists can extract different depictions of the same situation, hence produce differing policy solutions.
What is the key understanding of the ‘problem’ identified in the text?
As Bennett phrases it, the issue is the current welfare system that lets people fall into a multigenerational chain of dependency. Welfare dependency creates adults who are insufficient to work and lacking in skills, and the children growing up in reliant households will pick up the same behaviours and practices, hence falling into the same sequence. Dependency therefore drains confidence and goals, contributing to its destructive nature. Because it is intergenerational, the bill has a strong focus on helping youth and teen parents to break this trend. …show more content…
Despite targeting youth, Maori spend around a year longer on welfare than non-Maori on average. (Marie, Fergusson & Boden 2011, 20) Since colonial times there has been a disruption of the original Maori ways of life, the ramifications of which contribute to family instabilities, social, economic and mental problems today. Therefore anti-racist theorists form values that welfare is distributed unevenly due to contextual issues, as 15% of New Zealand’s population is Maori, yet they make up 33% of those on the unemployment benefit (Marie, Fergusson & Boden 2011, 15). These challenges make it more difficult for Maori to enter the