Canada’s economic recovery hinges on federal leadership to pull recession victims out of the poor house and prevent Canadians from plunging into deeper poverty, says Campaign 2000’s new report card on child and family poverty.
Reduced Poverty = Better Health for All looks at the nation’s most recent child and family poverty rate compared to 21 years ago, when Parliament unanimously resolved to end child poverty by 2000, and finds that 610,000 children (2008 LICO after-tax) and their families lived in poverty even before the recession hit.
The child poverty rate of 9.1 per cent is slightly less than when it was 11.9 per cent in 1989. Lessons from past recessions tell us that poverty will rise before the recovery is complete. The report card’s key findings show Canada has a long way to go to prevent and reduce poverty:
- One in 10 children still lives in poverty in Canada. It’s worse for children living in First Nations communities: one in four grow up in poverty;
- Employment is not always an assured pathway out of poverty: 1 in 3 low-income children lives in families where at least one parent works full-time year round and almost 400,000 adult full-time workers earn less than $10 per hour.
- Child poverty is persistent across Canada: rates of child and family poverty (LICO before-tax) are in the double digits in all provinces.
- The gap between rich and poor has widened: On average, for every dollar the families in the poorest 10 per cent had, families in the richest 10 per cent had almost 13 times as much ($12.66) in 2008.
Provincial Report Cards on Child and Family Poverty were also released today in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan.