Child poverty has been consistently left off the agenda in industrialised countries, with either a failure to acknowledge the problem or a coupling of the problem with broader policy issues such as taxes and housing expenses. The effect of this has been a rise in child poverty, with New Zealand experiencing a child poverty rate of 22 percent in recent years. This rate puts New Zealand as one of the top ten OECD countries in terms of child poverty and indicates a need for the problem to be addressed with policy to alleviate this level of suffering.