• Child care is said to be a public good because it supposedly has developmental and academic benefits for children, and increases female labour-force participation and therefore economic growth. Numerous reports state unequivocally—but often without providing supporting evidence—that more women would work if child care was cheaper and more easily available. • The 2007 CIS...

In a time when governments are running up enormous welfare bills and intrusively regulating everyday life, this series of essays reminds us that many people do not need to rely on the government to survive.In a time when governments are running up enormous welfare bills and intrusively regulating everyday life, a series of essays by...

In this policy monograph Policy Analyst Sara Hudson argues that it is time to abandon the misguided notion that CDEP ‘helps’ Indigenous people and acknowledge that CDEP masks the real level of Indigenous unemployment and hides the crisis in Indigenous education. “If the government wants to break the cycle of joblessness, welfare dependence, and its...

The Rudd government has based its $220 million GP Super Clinics and preventive health policy on the prevailing assumption that more spending on preventive care will tackle obesity, lower chronic disease rates, and reduce health costs. 'But,' Sammut says, 'GP Super Clinics threaten to accentuate, not alleviate, Medicare's unsustainabilty.'

KiwiSaver represents a fundamental change to New Zealand’s retirement system, which now combines one of the most generous pensions in the world with a heavily subsidised saving scheme. It represents a major shift in how people allocate money over their lives. It is a pointless and expensive straitjacket on the New Zealand economy. The incentives...