Youth at risk - systemic impacts

Review

In the previous two topics, we focused on risk factors that impact young people directly and introduced the wider socio-economic-political context in Topic 2.3.2 ‘Youth at risk – social contexts’.

In this topic, we focus on the role this wider context can play in outcomes for young people. It is not always obvious. When a young person does not achieve NCEA Level 2 it might be easy to point to conflicts with teachers or not coming to class. But what about the less visible factors within the system that may be contributing to the conflict or absenteeism?

While we may not have a lot of control over determining factors like family income, employment status, housing, education, social exclusion or position, it is important to understand the role these may be playing in the lives of the young people we work with. And in the institutions or organisation we represent.

Research consistently shows a direct connection between families and communities with higher incomes and better life outcomes: access to healthier food and stable housing, greater job satisfaction and income security, better physical and mental health, less engagement with police and the justice system, and access to a wider range of educational and recreational options.

So, what are the key social, cultural, environmental, economic and political determinants that lead to better or worse outcomes for young people?

In ‘Youth at risk – social contexts’ we introduced this framework in section 2: Risks and Protective Factors in Centre for Social Impacts’ Thriving Rangatahi: A review of protective and risk factors.¹

Framework of factors and contexts

1. Health
2. Education
3. Safety
4. Housing
5. Employment
6. Income
7. Cultural Identity
8. Social Connections
9. Environment
10. Civic Participation
11. Resilience
12. Leisure and Recreation

Task – Review

Look back at section 2 (pages 12–38) of that report and the 12 categories of factors.

In ‘Youth at risk – social contexts’ we focused primarily on the individual and whānau/family contexts. This time we focus on the protective factors and risk factors identified as part of the socio-political context in this model. As you work through this topic, try to identify where these impacts put young people at risk and which protective factors can help mitigate those risks.

Let us look at some of the key impacts of the socio-economic-political context in more detail:

• education
• employment
• income
• housing
• living standards
• deprivation
• justice
• racism
• language.

Qualifications and higher levels of educational achievement overall, in New Zealand at least, correlate with higher incomes, greater employment opportunities, more stable employment, greater levels of work autonomy and reported job satisfaction.

It is not just due to the achievement of qualifications. Higher education plays a role in society as one of the most established paths to greater social mobility. Education helps people to ‘fit in’ better with society. To gain not only higher family incomes but also higher social status. With greater digital, technological and academic literacy the easier it is to function in society and the more likely it is to do work you find interesting.

How education happens is very important. Ideally, school would be a place for young people to explore their potential, lay the foundation for their future, and develop a positive social and personal identity. Yet, for some young people school has them feeling alienated and excluded. They are not learning how to ‘fit in’ with society. Schools do not help them gain confidence in their ability and identity – it may even do the exact opposite.

This relationship to education does not happen just at the level of the individual. It often occurs within the context of the family/whānau or community, and it is often intergenerational.

Māori education

Māori have had a difficult relationship with mainstream education. It was often used as a mechanism to suppress Māori political and cultural autonomy; and to reinforce structural inequalities, sometimes through targeted policies like assimilation. Today, Māori students are the demographic most likely to be stood down or leave school without NCEA Level 2.

However, the reintroduction of kaupapa Māori education has seen greater Māori participation in education at all levels. Within the education system, there are programmes specifically targeting inequalities and discrimination Māori students face. Some involve working directly with students, others focus on teacher training and school management practices, yet others on the development and implementation of policy and funding at a government or ministerial level.

But it is not just about what happens within the education system (at all levels). Families and communities with low or no qualifications often have a generational history of New Zealand’s education being alienating or even traumatic. Relationships between them and the school system can be characterized by distrust, misunderstanding, conflict, distain or even anger. This does not only apply to Māori, but they often feel the brunt of this fraught intergenerational relationship most strongly.

Explore further

To gain further insight into Māori and the New Zealand educational system please read this chapter called ‘Reclaiming Māori education’ by Ranginui Walker². It is easy to read and very interesting. It provides a necessary historical context which anyone working with youth should be aware of.

Wider context of educational inequity

Improving the relationship that young people, their families and communities have with education (or the education system) means understanding and engaging with the underlying drivers that promote or work against educational achievement.

Here are some of the most important drivers:

• lifting families and communities out of generational poverty and inequality
• family incomes need to be higher
• caregivers need to experience positive educational experiences and opportunities, even as adults
• education has to be tangibly experienced as providing greater opportunities for everyone.

When everyone in society has positive educational experiences and/or is provided with greater opportunities through education they are more likely to pass those values to their children.

Students in communities with low decile schools are statistically more likely to be experiencing deprivation and are less likely to achieve NCEA Level 2. To mitigate the impacts of poverty, these schools need greater resourcing. Low income families and communities are less materially able to supplement gaps in services and education like higher income communities can. This can range from sport and recreational facilities to access to quality food and school uniforms. The schools need resources and programmes aimed at building stronger relationships with their local community to provide students with opportunities on par with their peers in higher decile schools. This is even more necessary for students with special needs or disabilities, who are often at even greater risk in lower income areas.

While students can experience racism and negative stereotyping in any area of society, it may be most directly felt through the education systems from peers, adults in the school, the school as an institution or through national education policy. One well-known example is teachers and educational institutions with lower expectations for Māori students.³

Questions to think about

• In your opinion, how should governments address educational risk at a national policy level?
• What could schools and educational institutions/organisations be doing better?
• What can individual teachers and youth workers do?
• Why do Māori or other young people find education alienating?
• How could New Zealand society value te reo Māori and tikanga better? What difference might this make for Māori students? And for all students?
• Only a very small minority of students do their education in te reo Māori, despite it being an official language. How might this be impacting young people’s educational achievement in New Zealand? What might New Zealand be like if this became a majority of students?

Employment is not just about having ‘a job’. It is also about having:

• freedom to choose your employment
• fair treatment and compensation
• safe and healthy working conditions
• protection from unemployment.

In New Zealand, the type of work and education available for young people, their whānau/family and community is a critical indicator for health and well-being. Having access to a comfortable standard of living and housing to maintain health and well-being depends, for most New Zealanders, on employment status.

While employment is better than unemployment, ‘having a job’ can also mean exploitation if that job is badly paid, unsafe, insecure (casual, changing shifts) and gives the employee little control over how they work or has no pathway forward to a better position. Jobs that are boring or make employees feel ‘stuck’ are stressful and can lead to poor mental or physical health outcomes.

According to Stats NZ, the unemployment rate for young people (15–24) not in employment, education or training was 13% and for those 20–24 it was 15%. Compare this with New Zealand’s overall unemployment rate of 4.5%. Unemployment is not evenly distributed. Māori and Pacific populations, for example, have similar figures, but it is three times higher than for Pākehā.⁴

Māori and Pacific workers also disproportionally work in service industries, warehouses or factories as plant operators or assemblers. This type of work is often more unsafe, poorly paid, insecure, and less likely to pathway into ‘better jobs’.

Explore further

The 1980s and 90s were a time of major economic and social restructuring in New Zealand. Lack of employment opportunities and poor work conditions for Māori has been shown to account for a significant widening of the gaps in mortality rates between Māori and non-Māori at this time. This means that unemployment and poor working conditions can severely affect the quality and length of your life. If you would like to know more about the roots of our current employment disparity you may be interested in this research paper.⁵

Questions to think about

• In your opinion, how should governments address work at a national policy level?
• What should schools, educational and other institutions be doing to improve employment outcomes for young people?
• What can individual teachers and youth workers do?
• Why do Māori, Pacific and other young people face discrimination to get a job, the types of jobs available and wages paid? What discrimination do young people face?
• How do employment outcomes contribute to family/whānau and community health and well-being?
• What is the relationship between work and intergenerational poverty in New Zealand?

Everyone needs an income that can maintain the health and well-being of themselves and their families through a comfortable or at least adequate standard of living.

As with education and employment, income has a well-established link to life outcomes. At its most basic level the higher the income of a community the lower the rate of disease, injury and mortality across the lifespan. The closer the income gap for all sectors of the population the more connected everyone feels to the each other and the more invested they feel in the whole society. Not unsurprisingly both Māori and non-Māori on the highest incomes have lower death rates than people on middle incomes, who in turn have lower death rates that those on low incomes.⁶

Task: Income gap

The income gap between Māori and non-Māori is substantial.

Read this news article by Carmen Parahi on the income gap for Māori.⁷

• What is the income difference for Māori adults?
• Are there also age, gender, geographic or other differences?

Read this summary of a paper on New Zealand’s ethnic wage gap⁸:

• What are the Māori–Pākehā and Pacific–Pākehā wage disparities?
• What is the relationship between the ethnic wage gap and the gender wage gap?
• What does this mean for Māori and Pacific women?

This income disparity means that a larger proportion of Māori whānau and communities are living in poverty and their children are growing up in poverty⁹. You can read more in this latest release of child poverty statistics by Stats NZ.

Questions to think about

• In your opinion, how should governments address the income gap and low incomes at a national policy level?
• What does it mean for schools and organisations working with young people to be in low income communities? How should they operate in response to this?
• What can individual teachers and youth workers do?
• What do the income disparities mean for young Māori and Pacific people?
• What is the relationship between employment, income and life opportunities? What do young people need to protect themselves from the impacts of this relationship?
• How does income affect the overall health and well-being of a society?

Directly related to income is living standards. A good standard of living is one that adequately provides you with what you need to take care of the physical, mental, spiritual and social needs of yourself and your family. It also means that children and young people can develop in a safe, comfortable environment without experiencing the effects of deprivation in key areas of their life like family, school or recreation.

New Zealand measures family living standards through a national survey called the Economic Living Standards Index. Every year this survey uses a consistent range of indicators that includes income, access to amenities and services, etc.

Explore further

If you would like to know more about New Zealand’s living standards you can learn more here at the Ministry of Social Development’s page on Living Standards research.¹⁰

Children’s living standards are especially important. Deprivation and hardship in childhood can have a serious impact on immediate and long-term health and well-being. It can negatively impact the whole course of someone’s life, education and employment opportunities. The impacts of childhood living standards, without effective intervention, can become intergenerational.

What to do about living standards?

Historically, New Zealand has often addressed living standards at a structural level rather than through individual families. Public schools, libraries, parks, sanitation, roads, non-means tested benefits like pensions, hospitals, etc. were aimed at lifting collective living standards for everyone in society. For example, today almost everyone in New Zealand should have access to potable (safe to drink) water. This has a huge social benefit for public health. During the COVID-19 pandemic New Zealand was able to implement national handwashing due to the high availability of clean water and handwashing facilities.

Changes in government policy to focus on individual rather than collective living standards has seen a decline in living standards for some communities, but not others. New Zealand’s Living Standards survey shows Māori and Pacific peoples have lower than average living standards and that this deficit has grown over the past two decades, especially for those the survey identifies as experiencing severe hardship.

Think about this within the context of childhood poverty and how it can impact throughout a person’s life, and what this means for children trapped in intergenerational poverty. The debate around how to raise living standards is ongoing. Should it be through large scale structural interventions, through targeted programmes for particular whānau/families or communities, or a mixture of both?

The Living Standards research shows that families with children and on benefits are especially at risk of low living standards or hardship. The gap between the proportions of Māori children in benefit families and non-Māori is consistently high. In 2006, it was 46% of Māori children compared to 29.6% of Pacific and 12.3% of Pākehā children. The reasons for this are complex, but economic policies, unemployment, low income, poor or unstable housing and discrimination work together to put proportionally more Māori families on benefit programmes than non-Māori. In recent years, social policy has started to shift away from a focus on ‘reward to work’. This emphasis left many children in benefit or non-working families behind, intensifying intergenerational poverty. The focus is now more on what needs to be done to mitigate the impacts of child poverty. Māori children are consistently the most impacted by this.

Questions to think about

• In your opinion, how should governments address living standards at a national policy level?
• What can or should be done about child poverty and low living standards outside of government policy?
• Why should New Zealand focus on the living standards of Māori children and youth?
• What are the impacts of intergenerational poverty and what does this mean for people working with youth in New Zealand?
• What do you think can or should be done to raise living standards in New Zealand?

For many New Zealanders, the current housing situation has reached crisis point. Access to housing that is safe, comfortable, affordable, and stable is an ongoing national debate. Housing situations correlate with standard of living statistics. Overcrowded dwellings, poor housing conditions and insecure occupation put children and their families at further risk for poor educational and health outcomes, and make it more difficult to access services that are available for family support. As with other determinants, there is a significant difference between the quality of housing for Māori and non-Māori families.

Families in rental or temporary accommodation are more likely to be living in overcrowded environments. Overcrowding means fewer quiet spaces to study or sleep, which impact how young people can keep up at school. Girls often have more housekeeping and childcare responsibilities in larger families, especially when adults are working long hours on low wages for the family’s survival. Home ownership, which is an indicator of income stability and higher standards of living, is significantly higher among European New Zealanders (60%) compared to Māori (32%) and Pacific peoples (26%).

Māori and some other ethnic groups are more likely to face discrimination in renting and buying housing. Housing discrimination correlates with poor physical and mental health outcomes, as well as behaviours like smoking rates that are the causes of these outcomes.

Explore further

Please read this news story by Michael Neilson on a government report into the relationship between childhood poverty and high-cost, low-quality housing and its detrimental impact on New Zealand society overall, but especially its young people.¹¹

If you would like to know more about the relationship between housing and how it relates to other determinants and risks for families, you should find this 2020 Housing in Aotearoa report interesting to look through.¹²

Questions to think about

• In your opinion, how should governments address housing at a national policy level?
• What impact does homeownership have on life outcomes for young people? For example, what are the implications of living in rental or temporary housing and getting a consistent education?
• What is the relationship between housing (quality, size and the number of people) and other determinants like income or standard of living? What about educational or employment outcomes?
• How do these housing situations and outcomes become intergenerational?
• What can individual teachers and youth workers do?
• How are Māori impacted by the housing crisis?
• What are the impacts to New Zealand society when fewer people own their own homes?

Deprivation, or lacking the basic necessities to live in society, is not spread evenly throughout New Zealand. Different geographic and social communities are impacted differently. New Zealand measures deprivation every five years for nine variables across the whole population. Each area gets a score from least deprived (1) to most deprived (10). If everything in New Zealand was equitable you should be able to take 10% of the Māori population and 10% of the non-Māori population and see roughly equal numbers in each decile. Unfortunately, there is a significant disparity. A higher proportion of Māori live in very deprived areas compared to non-Māori. This trend has not changed since the mid-1990s.

Task: Deprivation in New Zealand

Have a look at New Zealand’s socioeconomic deprivation profile¹³:

• Find where you and your family live. What is the decile?
• Find where most of the young people you work with live. What is their decile(s)?
• What are the nine variables upon which this decile rating is based? Which apply to you? Which apply to the young people you work with?
• What does this profile tell us about the relationship between deprivation and life outcomes for young people?
• What does deprivation mean for you as a youth worker?
• What, in your opinion, should the government and/or other organisations be doing to address deprivation?

Those most likely to engage with New Zealand’s justice system, especially in negative ways, are also those most negatively impacted by the other determinants explored in this topic. Everyone should be equal under New Zealand law and is entitled to equal legal protection without discrimination. However, in practice, it does not play out like this.

Bias against Māori in the justice system

Māori are more likely to engage with or be apprehended by the police than non-Māori. Both the public and the police show higher levels of vigilance in reporting on and responding to less serious offences by Māori youth than their non-Māori peers. Māori youth are more likely to be arrested for less severe offences and police are more likely to refer them to the courts for those minor offences, while more often referring non-Māori to family group conferences. Māori offenders also have higher conviction rates for similar offending histories.

Over time, this cumulates into serious outcomes for young Māori. Especially as higher arrest rates negatively impact future employment opportunities. Income levels, educational disadvantages and discrimination also make it harder for Māori to access legal information, advice and representation. Most serious of all are the disturbingly high incarceration rates for young Māori men, which hides the true unemployment rate. Incarceration has serious implications for young Māori men’s futures and those of their children.

Māori are also more likely to be victims of crime, especially when it is correlated with sole parenthood, unemployment, low incomes, benefits, rental and temporary accommodation, deprivation and being young.

Explore further

Read the first section of the Youth crime action plan¹⁴, which discusses all of these issues for all New Zealand youth (including Māori). The rest of the report then goes on to present the government’s response at a policy level.

Read a report into the Ministry of Justice’s response to Māori¹⁵ overall. Think about how these findings could relate specifically to youth.

Task: Police and bias

Read these two news stories:

Police launch investigation into 'unconscious bias' against Māori | RNZ News¹⁶

Police using app to photograph innocent youth: 'It's so wrong' | RNZ News¹⁷

• What are the implications of bias and police interactions for youth?
• Why does it happen? Who is most impacted?
• What might this mean for those working with young people in New Zealand?

Racism is a key determinant for inequality. There are many forms of racial discrimination young people can experience. It can be both interpersonal and/or structural.

National surveys on experiences of racial discrimination in New Zealand consistently report a high prevalence, especially for Māori. But other ethnic groups are also impacted. This includes:

• ethnically motivated physical attacks
• ethnically motivated verbal attacks
• unfair treatment because of ethnicity in the health system, at work or when trying to rent or buy a house.

Racial discrimination is rarely a single event and people will report, when asked, different types of racial discrimination across multiple settings.

Task: Racial discrimination in New Zealand

Read this article by Jagadish Thaker on the 2021 survey of discrimination and racism [18].

• What might in mean for young people to experience or witness this?
• What are some of the factors driving this increase in reported instances?

• What does it mean for youth workers and their interactions with young people?

  Read this article by Lucy Xia on Asian youth and mental health [19].

• How do racism and discrimination relate to risks for young people, such as mental health risks?

  Read this article on the experience of growing up Māori and the experience of racism [20].

• What are the implications of racism for young people’s overall life outcomes? How does experiencing racism impact other areas of their lives?

Language

Related to racial discrimination is discrimination against languages that are not English. Language is deeply related to identity and culture, to be passed on to future generations along with history, traditions, philosophies, stories, literacy, and names.

Māori are especially impacted by language discrimination because this is the only place where te reo Māori is used. Proficiency in, and the use of, te reo Māori is growing. Efforts are being made to normalise the use of te reo Māori in education, media, the workplace and all areas of everyday life. While this is vital for Māori, it is also important for non-Māori.

Later in this course you will learn more about the impacts of colonisation on young people and their relationship to Māori perspectives on history, philosophy, writing and literature, oral and artistic traditions, and the use of Māori names for communities, places and people. Language carries the tradition and passes it on to the next generation.

• Think about how te reo Māori’s status and use in New Zealand impacts on young people and the structural determinants we have looked at in this topic.

Review the notes you have started to make for Task 1 of Assessment 1.2. What are the risk factors you might look at in your presentation?

How are these risk factors impacted by New Zealand’s socio-economic-political context and the determinants we explored in this topic?

Framework of factors and contexts

1. Health
2. Education
3. Safety
4. Housing
5. Employment
6. Income
7. Cultural Identity
8. Social Connections
9. Environment
10. Civic Participation
11. Resilience
12. Leisure and Recreation

For your assessment you will need to include a discussion of the wider socio-economic-political context surrounding the risk factor(s) that you are focusing on. Read the full set of instructions for Task 1 again and continue to make notes and work on the content of your presentation. Download and read the PowerPoint template that is provided on the Assessment Page. It is listed under ‘Assessment Files’. You do not have to use this template, but it provides a structure that you may find helpful.

You are now ready to complete Task 1 of Assessment 1.2.