Another Look at Poverty in Canada
Description:
In order to assess the effectiveness of poverty-reduction efforts, it is useful to know how many poor Canadians there are, the extent of their poverty and the background factors that contribute to their risks of being poor. Both Statistics Canada and many anti-poverty organizations including the National Council of Welfare use the low income cut-offs (LICOs) of Statistics Canada to differentiate between Canadians living in straitened circumstances and those that are relatively well-off.
However, whereas many anti-poverty groups regard LICOs as poverty lines, Statistics Canada refers to LICOs simply as low-income lines. Moreover, some governments and policy think-tanks have criticized LICOs as being difficult to understand, as over-inflating the level of poverty in Canada, or as glossing over regional differences in costs of living and, therefore, as over-estimating poverty for some areas while under-estimating it for others.
In 1999, Canada’s social ministers set up a federal/provincial/territorial working group to construct a new market basket measure (MBM). Key among the goals the ministers expect the MBM to meet are: to harmonize divergent views on how best to measure poverty in Canada, to include all goods and services that Canadians consider to be essential to normal living, to take regional and annual differences in costs of living into account, and to be easily understood by members of the public. Media reports indicate that the MBM working group has completed and will soon release its report.
The National Council of Welfare is interested in exploring the extent to which the new market basket measure adds to our understanding and will contribute to poverty-reduction in Canada. Accordingly, in this presentation, we will compare the MBM against other poverty lines, including LICOs. Finally, the proposed presentation will issue a policy statement from the National Council of Welfare on the MBM.[abstract]
Type of Resource:
Government Document
Publication Date:
2003
Location:
Ottawa