The New Zealand Initiative has released a damning report on the welfare system.

The report, titled Welfare, Work and Wellbeing, comes from former Treasury Director Dr Bryce Wilkinson.

The report shows 10 per cent of our working age population are on a main welfare benefit, compared with just two per cent in the 1970's.

READ MORE: Report masks a whole range of societal changes, says Mike O'Brien

Wilkinson, a senior research fellow with the Initiative, told Mike Hosking it's definitely associated with a big growth in sole parent families.

"The awful thing is that it's a cycle of disadvantage coming through. Troubled parents are producing troubled kids, and those troubled kids are growing in to troubled adults, and having babies a bit earlier, getting on to welfare a bit earlier."

The report was slammed as narrow minded by Auckland University's Associate Professor of Counselling Mike O'Brien.

LISTEN TO BRYCE WILKINSON TALK WITH MIKE HOSKING ABOVE