Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich: something for nothing. - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
Entrenched poverty is a devastating downward spiral often exacerbated by a range of social hazards including gambling, debt, alcohol and loan sharks.
Efforts to reduce harm from social hazards must focus not only on the individual, but also on the hazards themselves, and on the wider economic and social environment in which they thrive. For example New Zealand has one of the highest concentrations of pokie machines in the world. These machines are particularly efficient when it comes to removing money from low income communities.
Sadly, it is usually the most vulnerable children who pay the price of the recent proliferation of these hazards in low-income communities. If children are to be protected from their effects, the government must make greater efforts to support families and communities, and reduce access to legal and illegal social hazards, including gambling, tobacco, alcohol, and high-priced debt.
Every day in New Zealand ...
$35 million is gambled
$5.5 million is lost
118 foodbanks are accessed by families
(Source: Problem Gambling Foundation 2007)
How many pokie machines are there in your area? In low income communities around the country? See Gambling Watch's document here.
Pokie trusts are an expensive way to fund social development. "For every dollar given to an essential social service by a pokie trust, about three dollars has been lost by someone into one of their pokie machines" (Dave Macpherson, Gambling Watch).
CPAG has written a backgrounder on social hazards and child poverty, available here. There is also a chapter about social hazards in Left Behind