A KiwiSaver scheme for children is being called for to plug the gap between the rich and the poor in New Zealand.
Wealth and New Zealand author Max Rashbrooke told TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning there is a need to "level up the playing field", with the poorest half of the country owning just two per cent of the country's assets.
That is compared to the wealthiest 10 per cent of New Zealanders who own 59 per cent of all the nation's assets and the middle classes owning around 39 per cent.
Mr Rashbrooke said it was hard to think of equal opportunities in New Zealand with the rich dominating the nation's assets.
"We like to think that there's a fair go in New Zealand, right, that's the great phase and that there's an even chance for everyone," he said.
"But when you look at a situation when where just the one per cent of New Zealanders control 20 per cent of all the assets and you think about all the advantages that that gives them and the advantages that they can give to their children and how that goes on through the generations.
"It's pretty hard to think that there's equal opportunities in New Zealand anymore."
Mr Rashbrooke also said intergenerational wealth contributes to inequality.
"Increasingly, these things are intergenerational so some people are on the track towards housing and prosperity and other people aren't and these are all big structural, political things.
"The rules aren't fair to everyone. What could we do? Well you look at both ends of that playing field, you look at the families, the children that are growing up."
Mr Rashbrooke talked about Ngāi Tahu which has a matched savings scheme for its whānau so that children turn 18 with a decent amount of savings behind them.
"We could do a national version of that, call it 'kids KiwiSaver', you know, families putting in very small amounts, Government matching that," he suggested.
"That would help address the unfairness at one end - kids who are going to hit 18 and through no fault of their own not have a big deposit.
"How would you fund that? Well you could fund that through an inheritance tax for instance because there's something unfair that some people get inheritances and some people don't, or you could have a wealth tax on the very high end - recognise that some wealth is earned but some is generated through luck.
"I think that would start to level up that playing field."
Mr Rashbrooke credited the Government for taking some "modest steps in the right direction" by focusing on child poverty and increasing incomes for some of those at the lower end, but added that it had been "hampered by coalition politics" as well as issues in housing.
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