Canada has seen some noticeable economic improvements in the last ten years; however:
- 1 in 10 Canadians live in poverty
- 1 in 3 Canadian adults that work full-time do not make enough money to sustain themselves and their families with a healthy lifestyle
Canada measures poverty in relative terms and does not have an official poverty line. Canadian poverty statistics are calculated b yCanada’s Low Income Cut-Offs (LICOs), which is calculated by comparing the percentage of income individuals and families spend on basic needs with other Canadians.
Many blame unemployment as the “big, bad” reason for poverty in Canada and other developed countries, but that’s not always the case. As a matter of fact, the Canadian unemployment rate is in decline. An overlooked and underlying factor of poverty in many of the world’s wealthy, industrialized countries is income inequality, which is the extent to which income is unevenly distributed in one country.
In 2008, for every dollar the average Canadian family in the poorest 10% of the population had, Canadian families in the richest 10% of the population had 13 times as much.
When income inequality in a country is high, it reflects on how a country uses its resources. The higher the income inequality in a country, the slower the economic growth, usually begging the question: “Is the country utilizing its citizenship’s skills and capabilities to the fullest extent?”
Measured by the Gini Index (which calculates how far income distribution among individuals in a country deviates from an exactly equal distribution), income inequality in Canada has increased more over the last 20 years than in any other country with similar income per capita.
Nearly 400,000 full-time, Canadian adult employees earn less than $10 an hour, drawing them and their families deeper into the cycle of poverty. And with poverty comes poor health— The World Health Organization has named poverty as being the single largest determinant of health.
- The majority of the working-poor cannot afford secure and affordable housing and healthy (or inmany instances an adequate amount of) food
- Parents on limitedincome often skip meals so their children have an adequate diet
- Limited food budgets and lack of access to fresh food often results in Type 2 diabetes—which was formerly seen in adults only, but is now increasing in children
And perhaps one of the scarier statistics to surface:
- According to a study conducted by McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, there is a 21-year difference in life expectancy between the poorest neighborhood and the wealthiest neighborhood
Research by Poverty is Making Us Sick show that if annual income were increased by $1,000 a year to the poorest 20% of Canadians, it would lead to as many as 10,000 fewer chronic conditions and 6,600 fewer disability days every two weeks.
So, while poverty in Canada doesn’t look like poverty in unindustrialized nations, it exists nonetheless. The difficult decisions families must make (pay rent or buy food) are the same, contributing to a decline inquality of life and degrading the emotional and physical health of a nation.
