Walter Nash initiated the capitalisation of family benefits in 1958 by allowing all of each child’s benefit to be paid in advance in a lump sum if this was used either for the purchase of a new house or for necessary additions to a house the family was already in.[i] Family benefits increased to $1.50 a week.[ii]
Footnotes
- [i] go to main content Margaret McClure, A Civilised Community: A History of Social Security in New Zealand 1898–1998, Auckland, 1998, p. 154.; The April report: report of the Royal Commission on Social Policy’, Volume 1: New Zealand Today, New Zealand Royal Commission on Social Policy, Wellington, 1988, p. 29.; Department of Social Welfare, Social Welfare Today, Wellington, 1980, p. 3.
- [ii] go to main content Brian Easton, Social Policy and the Welfare State in New Zealand, Australia, 1980, p. 106.