CivicAccess

G&M - Two decades on, child poverty persists with no solution in sight

classic Classic list List threaded Threaded
♦
♦
 2 messages Options
Tracey P. Lauriault
Reply | Threaded
Open this post in threaded view
♦
♦
|

G&M - Two decades on, child poverty persists with no solution in sight

Tracey P. Lauriault

Go to The Globe and Mail

 

National

Two decades on, child poverty persists with no solution in sight

Scene from the film Four Feet Up.

Why is it that nearly 10 per cent of Canadian kids live below the poverty line, even as parliament pledged to end child poverty?

Joe Freisen

>From Monday's Globe and Mail Published on Sunday, Nov. 22, 2009 8:29PM EST Last updated on Monday, Nov. 23, 2009 3:10AM EST

Twenty years ago this week Parliament voted unanimously to eliminate child poverty within a decade. It didn't happen. Ten years on, it still hasn't happened.

The most recent statistics, taken in 2007 before the recession hit, show 637,000 children, or 9.5 per cent of all Canadian kids, living in poverty. Why has Canada failed where other wealthy countries succeeded? In part because voters and governments have balked at aggressively redistributing wealth. But that's only a small part of the story. More significant, according to sociologist John Myles, is a sea-change in Canadian work and family life.

Parents can be poor for a host of reasons, but the two most powerful predictors of a slide into poverty are the loss of a job or the breakup of a marriage.

The past three decades have seen higher divorce rates and a near doubling of the proportion of single-parent families, from 6 per cent to 11 per cent. As Mr. Myles argues, this is significant because family formation is unlikely to respond to public policy.

When parents suddenly becomes single parents, they lose the economies of scale associated with a partnership: shared costs of accommodation and food, for instance, as well as the insurance of having a potential second earner. Of all families living in poverty, more than 40 per cent are led by a single parent.

Another growing trend is for highly educated (and high-earning) women to marry highly educated men, creating super-earning families at the top of the scale and stagnation at the bottom. In 1980, Prof. Myles said, the top earning women were married to men in the lower-middle income bracket. Today the top-earning women are married to the top-earning men, and the lowest-earning women to the lowest-earning men.

As Mr. Myles points out in a recent article, an online dating service to introduce university grads to high school drop-outs is probably not on Ottawa's policy agenda, so this trend is unlikely to slow.

“If we're really concerned about child poverty we have to be concerned about young adults and the kind of labour market opportunities they have,” Mr. Myles said. “We have an economy that's out of sync with the biological life course. People have kids when they're young. But the economy rewards people when they're old.”

The majority of children under six are being raised by parents under 35. But the earnings of workers under 35 have fallen or remained the same in relative terms over the last 30 years, which is blamed on the decline in manufacturing, growth of the service sector and drop in the rate of unionization among other factors. Young people also stay in school longer, so it takes longer to establish a career, he said.

Another factor is that recent immigrants earn substantially less than their Canadian-born counterparts, despite their higher levels of education. The poverty rate for immigrant children under 15 in 2005 was 33 per cent, compared to 12 per cent for non-immigrants. Among First Nations people living off-reserve, the rate was 34 per cent.

Poverty is not a life sentence, however. People move up and out of poverty all the time, although there is a minority stuck at the bottom of the scale, according to a recently published study by economists Shelley Phipps and Peter Burton. The 10-year study found that 5 per cent of children stayed in the bottom quintile of income over that decade, forming a small but significant chronic poverty group.

They also found that a child whose primary caregiver becomes a working single parent is 21.5 times more likely to slip to the bottom 20 per cent of the income scale.

Ms. Phipps said it's surprising that Canadians governments, cited abroad for addressing poverty among seniors so effectively, have failed in targeting poverty in the very young.

“We just haven't put enough resources into tackling poverty among kids,” Prof. Phipps said. “If you look at the track across time senior poverty just fell and fell, largely because of programs put in place such as Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.”

The persistence of poverty is a theme touched on in Nance Ackerman's National Film Board documentary Four Feet Up , which will be screened across Canada on Tuesday. The film follows Jennifer Justason, her 10-year-old son Isaiah and their family through a year in a New Minas, Nova Scotia trailer park.

Ms. Justason discusses going for days sometimes without eating, to ensure there's enough food for her kids. Isaiah says he knows he's “less fortunate,” although he has no idea what that means.

    Join the Discussion:

    Sorted by: Oldest first
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Most thumbs-up

    Latest Comments

     
     
    11/23/2009 8:14:45 AM
    I have no doubts that there is enough federal land which Canadian Government can grant to the poor and needy. Let’s not forget that ranching was Canadian way for many years.
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentRecommend(&#39;CommentKey:32fdef90-6a67-469d-bbb4-02a0ab956729&#39;)" class="pluckCommentRecommendIcon">
    0
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentDissapproval(&#39;CommentKey:32fdef90-6a67-469d-bbb4-02a0ab956729&#39;)">
    0
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentAbuseShow(event,&#39;CommentKey:32fdef90-6a67-469d-bbb4-02a0ab956729&#39;);" class="pluckReportAbuse">Report Abuse
     
     
    11/23/2009 8:13:38 AM
    So to reduce child poverty we (collectively) can make couples stay married if they have children; make it illegal to drop-out of school before high school graduation; make it illegal to have a child out of wedlock; get Natives off the Reserve and into integrated public schools from an early age until adulthood; stop the immigration to Canada of uneducated workers and their co-dependents; and generally live in a police state where government is not only in the Nation's bedrooms, but intrusive into peoples' private affairs.

    Or we can accept that if people are allowed to make decisions then some will make better decisions than others - like marrying a college grad instead of a high school drop-out - and that no amount of wealth distribution will eradicate child poverty, so long as it is flawed adults making those life decisions for those children.

    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentRecommend(&#39;CommentKey:9c4cdfac-9c32-4a4d-bd37-f2b28636a928&#39;)" class="pluckCommentRecommendIcon">
    1
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentDissapproval(&#39;CommentKey:9c4cdfac-9c32-4a4d-bd37-f2b28636a928&#39;)">
    0
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentAbuseShow(event,&#39;CommentKey:9c4cdfac-9c32-4a4d-bd37-f2b28636a928&#39;);" class="pluckReportAbuse">Report Abuse
     
     
    11/23/2009 8:08:11 AM
    This thing about poor immigrant's children not having enough to eat is a hoax! I know many immigrants who are receiving benefits due to low family income reported in Canada, yet live a very well-to-do life, due non other than their income and assets in their homeland that are not known to the authority. Granted there are poor immigrants - why did we take them in in the first place? but there are many others that are taking advantage of the hardworking tax paying Canadians. The government has let us down yet again.
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentRecommend(&#39;CommentKey:00cb5d38-b26a-4972-940b-8cc0dd114971&#39;)" class="pluckCommentRecommendIcon">
    1
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentDissapproval(&#39;CommentKey:00cb5d38-b26a-4972-940b-8cc0dd114971&#39;)">
    1
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentAbuseShow(event,&#39;CommentKey:00cb5d38-b26a-4972-940b-8cc0dd114971&#39;);" class="pluckReportAbuse">Report Abuse
     
     
    11/23/2009 8:05:14 AM
    Just an additional comment : my wife does voluntary work for a charity which provides (among other things) food vouchers for the poor. They visit applicants before agreeing to provive vouchers. Just last week she visited 3 new applicants. Between them they had 9 cats, 3 dogs and a ferret, yet they cannot feed their children.

    Priorities, or what?!
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentRecommend(&#39;CommentKey:e004315e-535f-46cb-bee6-4d23c2845ebc&#39;)" class="pluckCommentRecommendIcon">
    0
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentDissapproval(&#39;CommentKey:e004315e-535f-46cb-bee6-4d23c2845ebc&#39;)">
    1
    <a href="javascript:;" onclick="globe.pluck.commentAbuseShow(event,&#39;CommentKey:e004315e-535f-46cb-bee6-4d23c2845ebc&#39;);" class="pluckReportAbuse">Report Abuse
     




    --
    Tracey P. Lauriault
    613-234-2805
    https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
    Tracey P. Lauriault
    Reply | Threaded
    Open this post in threaded view
    ♦
    ♦
    |

    Re: G&M - Two decades on, child poverty persists with no solution in sight

    Tracey P. Lauriault
    Sorry all!  Sent to the wrong persons!

    t

    On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 8:26 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:
    Click here for more information

    Two decades on, child poverty persists with no solution in sight

    Scene from the film Four Feet Up.

    Scene from the film Four Feet Up. Nance Ackerman

    Why is it that nearly 10 per cent of Canadian kids live below the poverty line, even as parliament pledged to end child poverty?

    Joe Freisen

    >From Monday's Globe and Mail Published on Sunday, Nov. 22, 2009 8:29PM EST Last updated on Monday, Nov. 23, 2009 3:10AM EST

    Twenty years ago this week Parliament voted unanimously to eliminate child poverty within a decade. It didn't happen. Ten years on, it still hasn't happened.

    The most recent statistics, taken in 2007 before the recession hit, show 637,000 children, or 9.5 per cent of all Canadian kids, living in poverty. Why has Canada failed where other wealthy countries succeeded? In part because voters and governments have balked at aggressively redistributing wealth. But that's only a small part of the story. More significant, according to sociologist John Myles, is a sea-change in Canadian work and family life.

    Parents can be poor for a host of reasons, but the two most powerful predictors of a slide into poverty are the loss of a job or the breakup of a marriage.

    The past three decades have seen higher divorce rates and a near doubling of the proportion of single-parent families, from 6 per cent to 11 per cent. As Mr. Myles argues, this is significant because family formation is unlikely to respond to public policy.

    When parents suddenly becomes single parents, they lose the economies of scale associated with a partnership: shared costs of accommodation and food, for instance, as well as the insurance of having a potential second earner. Of all families living in poverty, more than 40 per cent are led by a single parent.

    Another growing trend is for highly educated (and high-earning) women to marry highly educated men, creating super-earning families at the top of the scale and stagnation at the bottom. In 1980, Prof. Myles said, the top earning women were married to men in the lower-middle income bracket. Today the top-earning women are married to the top-earning men, and the lowest-earning women to the lowest-earning men.

    As Mr. Myles points out in a recent article, an online dating service to introduce university grads to high school drop-outs is probably not on Ottawa's policy agenda, so this trend is unlikely to slow.

    “If we're really concerned about child poverty we have to be concerned about young adults and the kind of labour market opportunities they have,” Mr. Myles said. “We have an economy that's out of sync with the biological life course. People have kids when they're young. But the economy rewards people when they're old.”

    The majority of children under six are being raised by parents under 35. But the earnings of workers under 35 have fallen or remained the same in relative terms over the last 30 years, which is blamed on the decline in manufacturing, growth of the service sector and drop in the rate of unionization among other factors. Young people also stay in school longer, so it takes longer to establish a career, he said.

    Another factor is that recent immigrants earn substantially less than their Canadian-born counterparts, despite their higher levels of education. The poverty rate for immigrant children under 15 in 2005 was 33 per cent, compared to 12 per cent for non-immigrants. Among First Nations people living off-reserve, the rate was 34 per cent.

    Poverty is not a life sentence, however. People move up and out of poverty all the time, although there is a minority stuck at the bottom of the scale, according to a recently published study by economists Shelley Phipps and Peter Burton. The 10-year study found that 5 per cent of children stayed in the bottom quintile of income over that decade, forming a small but significant chronic poverty group.

    They also found that a child whose primary caregiver becomes a working single parent is 21.5 times more likely to slip to the bottom 20 per cent of the income scale.

    Ms. Phipps said it's surprising that Canadians governments, cited abroad for addressing poverty among seniors so effectively, have failed in targeting poverty in the very young.

    “We just haven't put enough resources into tackling poverty among kids,” Prof. Phipps said. “If you look at the track across time senior poverty just fell and fell, largely because of programs put in place such as Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.”

    The persistence of poverty is a theme touched on in Nance Ackerman's National Film Board documentary Four Feet Up , which will be screened across Canada on Tuesday. The film follows Jennifer Justason, her 10-year-old son Isaiah and their family through a year in a New Minas, Nova Scotia trailer park.

    Ms. Justason discusses going for days sometimes without eating, to ensure there's enough food for her kids. Isaiah says he knows he's “less fortunate,” although he has no idea what that means.

      Join the Discussion:

      Sorted by: Oldest first
      • Newest to Oldest
      • Oldest to Newest
      • Most thumbs-up

      Latest Comments

       
       
      11/23/2009 8:14:45 AM
      I have no doubts that there is enough federal land which Canadian Government can grant to the poor and needy. Let’s not forget that ranching was Canadian way for many years.
       
       
      11/23/2009 8:13:38 AM
      So to reduce child poverty we (collectively) can make couples stay married if they have children; make it illegal to drop-out of school before high school graduation; make it illegal to have a child out of wedlock; get Natives off the Reserve and into integrated public schools from an early age until adulthood; stop the immigration to Canada of uneducated workers and their co-dependents; and generally live in a police state where government is not only in the Nation's bedrooms, but intrusive into peoples' private affairs.

      Or we can accept that if people are allowed to make decisions then some will make better decisions than others - like marrying a college grad instead of a high school drop-out - and that no amount of wealth distribution will eradicate child poverty, so long as it is flawed adults making those life decisions for those children.
       
       
      11/23/2009 8:08:11 AM
      This thing about poor immigrant's children not having enough to eat is a hoax! I know many immigrants who are receiving benefits due to low family income reported in Canada, yet live a very well-to-do life, due non other than their income and assets in their homeland that are not known to the authority. Granted there are poor immigrants - why did we take them in in the first place? but there are many others that are taking advantage of the hardworking tax paying Canadians. The government has let us down yet again.
       
       
      11/23/2009 8:05:14 AM
      Just an additional comment : my wife does voluntary work for a charity which provides (among other things) food vouchers for the poor. They visit applicants before agreeing to provive vouchers. Just last week she visited 3 new applicants. Between them they had 9 cats, 3 dogs and a ferret, yet they cannot feed their children.

      Priorities, or what?!
       



      © Copyright 2009 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.




      --
      Tracey P. Lauriault
      613-234-2805
      https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault



      --
      Tracey P. Lauriault
      613-234-2805
      https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
      Free forum by Nabble Edit this page