Poverty and Affluence In Canada

What Would You Do? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IhGSCC3LlI (bystanders) or http://abcnews.go.com/WhatWouldYouDo/video/helping-homeless-17241998 (restaurant) Discussion: In your opinion, does the average Canadian care about poverty? Why or why not?

Salvation Army Report, 2011 Canadians ranked poverty as the third most important issue facing the country today, after the economy and health care. 89% of respondents agreed that people living in poverty deserve a helping hand. 81% agreed that helping out poor families helps set up children of these families for success. 63% agreed that poverty is a trap that is hard to escape. Despite this concern, poverty remains a problem in Canada…

Poverty in Canada More than 1 in 10 Canadians between 18 to 65 live in poverty (Conference Board of Canada). Canada ranks 15th among 17 countries.

What Is Poverty? Discussion: How do we define what poverty is? How do you know when an individual or a family is poor?

Low Income Cut-Off (LICO) Used by Statistics Canada to determine poverty. The average Canadian family spends 36% of its income on shelter, food and clothing. If families spend more than 56% (the average amount + 20%) of their income on shelter, food and clothing, they are considered to live below the poverty line.

Absolute vs. Relative Poverty There are two basic approaches to measuring poverty: Absolute - describes deprivation, a situation where a person can’t afford basic needs such as adequate food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. Relative - describes inequality, a situation where a person is noticeably worse off than most people in his or her community. Used by Statistics Canada. Many low income families can barely afford to pay the rent and put food on the table, let alone pay for dental care, eyeglasses, school outings, sports equipment for the kids, Internet access, or prescription drugs. These are things that most people in Canada take for granted and would consider necessities.

What Causes Poverty? What causes poverty? How do people become poor? Do a little research and consider; Who is experiencing poverty? Are the people young, women, older people, rural, urban, single parents? Why are they experiencing poverty? Do they lack education, job opportunities, good housing? How do they feel about their situations? Are they resentful, sad, accepting, angry? What changes need to take place so that these individuals are not experiencing poverty? (i.e. safe, affordable housing, work skills, affordable child care, etc.)

Some Poverty Statistics… In 2011, almost 1.7 million Ontarians were living in poverty, including almost 400,000 children (StatsCan). That’s approximately the entire population of Montreal in 2011. At higher risk of being poor are: Aboriginal people Recent immigrants People with disabilities Single parents and their children Injured workers 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 Canadians in low-paying, often part-time and unstable employment

The Working Poor Most poor people work… More than half (58%) of poor families relied mainly on employment earnings in 2007. Only 20% of poor couples (without children) depended mainly on welfare, 57% relied mainly on earnings. 25% of poor individuals relied mainly on welfare, 47% who relied on earnings.

The Working Poor Although work can provide a ladder out of poverty, this is not always the case. In the GTA, an increasing number of people are both employed and living in poverty. The highest concentration is found in the City of Toronto. Canada has one of the highest proportions of low-paid workers among industrialized countries. 1 in 6 workers, 1 in 5 female workers and 1 in 10 full-time workers are low paid and earning poverty wages. No minimum wage rate in Canada comes close to reaching the level of a living wage: the highest minimum wage rates pay about 66% to 75% of living wage rates.

Features of the Working Poor Key features of the working poor in the GTA (Metcalf Foundation, 2012): Commonly work in sales and service occupations. Work a comparable number of hours as the rest of the working-age population. Have more sources of income than those who are better off.

Features of the Working Poor More likely to be living without an adult partner. 63% married or common law partner vs. 78% Working-age immigrants are over-represented. In Canada in 2005, 23% of the working-age population were immigrants. However, 31% of the working poor were immigrants. Only slightly less educated on average than the rest of the working-age population. They tend to be younger as a group.

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Women and Poverty Women form the majority (about 53%) of people living in poverty in Canada. 70% of part-time workers and 66% of minimum wage earners are female. Not all women are at equal risk of being poor: Age - 41.5% of single, widowed or divorced women over 65 live in poverty. Immigration status - New immigrant women 25-44 years of age who have a university degree and work full-time earn $14,000 less than Canadian-born women. And…

Women and Lone-Parenthood 51.6% of lone-parent families headed by women live in poverty. The number of single parents jumped 8% between 2006 and 2011 (Statistics Canada). Single mothers, who comprise about 80% of all lone-parent families (or over 1 million families) in Canada, increased by 6%.

Women and Lone-Parenthood Women who leave a partner to raise children on their own are more than 5 times likely to live in poverty than if they stay with their partner. There’s plenty of evidence showing abused women sometimes stay in abusive relationships because they know that leaving will plunge themselves and their children into poverty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIWroI1wymg

Why Are Women More Likely to Be Poor? Women are more likely than men to be poor for two main reasons: Unpaid Work Pay Inequity

Women and Unpaid Work 70% of women with children under the age of 6 work. Women also bear most of the responsibility for caring for children and elderly adults. Many seniors have spent years caring for children and family members for free. This means they have not made a lot of income during their lives, so their pensions are lower and they are dependent on social benefits. Men and women work about the same number of paid hours, but women do more unpaid work (i.e. housework, childcare, meal preparation, eldercare...) (StatsCan, 2010). Women spend about 4.2 hours a day doing unpaid work vs. 2.2 hours for men. Stay-at-home dads do less childcare (under 1.6 hours/day) than stay-at-home moms (3.1 hours/day).

Question… How and why do you think women’s unpaid work affects their earnings?

Unpaid Work Continued Women are much more likely than men to lose time from paid work because of family responsibilities. In order to juggle domestic responsibilities, many women choose part-time, seasonal, contract or temporary jobs. The vast majority of part-time workers (70%) are women. Most of these jobs are low paid, with no security, few opportunities for advancement and no health benefits. 66% of minimum wage earners are female. Women’s domestic responsibilities make it harder to return to school or attend training sessions.

Unpaid Work Continued Women may interrupt their career to care for children or other family members I.e. women aged 40 who interrupted their careers for at least three years for maternity leave were earning about 30% less than women with no children. (HRDC, 2006) Women may cut down on their paid work, quit their jobs, take emergency leave from work or refuse promotions, in order to care for children, elderly parents or in-laws, or disabled This has a lifelong impact on a woman's wages, accumulation of pension benefits and experience in her chosen occupation.

Pay Inequity Women who work full-time earn about 74 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. Some people argue this gap can be explained by the fact that women can’t or won’t work as many hours as men. However, this wage gap persists even when hourly wages are compared: women earn an average of $17.96/hour compared to $21.43 for men, meaning women earn 83.8% of the male hourly wage. The wage gap persists even when women have the same education and experience as men. Although more women graduate from university, they are not earning as much as men. Female graduates earn an average of $62,800, males earn $91,800.30

Pay Inequity Part of the problem is that jobs that have been traditionally done by women pay less than traditional male jobs. This is true “regardless of the value of the work to the employer or the consumer.” The more a job is considered ‘women’s work,’ the less it pays.

Is the earning gap between men and women really that significant? Since women still shoulder most of the domestic load and face wage discrimination, it’s not surprising that - over their lifetime – they earn much less than men. 2007 - estimated average lifetime earnings for men was $803,000. Women earn about 65% of that ($519,600). Women’s lower earning power means: At risk of falling into poverty if they have children and then become separated, divorced or widowed. Less able to save for retirement and more likely to be poor as seniors. Fear of poverty means some women stay in abusive relationships. When women work outside the home and also do most of the domestic work, their health suffers. (StatsCan - women at every age are more likely than men to describe their days as ‘quite a bit’ or ‘extremely’ stressful.)

Child Poverty Children are poor because their parents (mainly their mothers) are poor. More than 1 million children live in poverty in Canada. This is approximately double the 2011 population of the entire city of Brampton.

Child Poverty & Government Policy On November 24, 1989, the House of Commons unanimously passed an all-party resolution that resolved to eliminate child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. However, Canada’s child poverty rate actually increased between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s.

The Cost of Child Poverty Poverty is strongly linked to poor health and poor school achievement. Poor children often start out as underweight babies, which sets them up for future health problems. Kids who live in poverty suffer from higher rates of asthma, diabetes, mental health issues and heart disease. Poor children have more speech and hearing problems, and score lower on cognitive tests. They are also more likely to struggle in school.

The Cost of Child Poverty Research shows poor children have: reduced motivation to learn, delayed cognitive development, lower achievement, less participation in extra-curricular activities, lower career aspirations, interrupted school attendance, lower university attendance, an increased risk of illiteracy and higher drop-out rates.

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“Democratic politics, at its best, is about choosing what kind of society we want to live in.” Ed Broadbent (NDP leader from1975 to 1989)

Income Disparity It would take about half a day for the average CEO to earn what the average Canadian earns in a year $45,448 (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives). The income gap between Canada's top CEOs and everyone else has skyrocketed over the past few decades. In 1995 CEOs earned 85 times more than the average salary By 2011, that ratio had grown to 235 times the average salary.

Toronto’s Vital Statistics The Issue: The income gap impact us all - they affect health, crime, productivity and prosperity. The Bottom Line: Toronto risks becoming a city of few middle income neighbourhoods. If current trends persist, middle income neighbourhoods will continue to disappear, as wealth and poverty become more clustered.

Our Future? Where we are: http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/canada-income/ Where we’re heading? http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/surprise-viral-hit-income-inequality-movie

The Minimum Wage Oct 2015 being raised to 11.25 was at a freeze of 10.25/hr The Campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage, has called for an immediate 37% increase to Ontario’s minimum wage This will bring minimum wage earners 10% above the poverty line. Poverty line for a single adult in Ontario is $18,582 Poverty line for an adult and child is $26,279

Societal Costs of Poverty Public costs: According to the National Council of Welfare (2011), the public cost of poverty in Canada is $25 billion per year and climbing. Health care costs: If all Torontonians were as healthy as those in the highest income group, there would be: 1,100 (18%) fewer deaths every year. Higher crime: While a minority of poor people turn to crime to supplement their income, the most frequent criminal offenders come from the poorest families with the worst housing  

Income Inequalities Can Force Social Change… The income gap creates a populace ready for change.

Income Inequality Can Also Impede Social Change… If people in poverty don’t know the system well enough to initiate social change. If they feel so alienated from the rest of society that they will just accept life in the margins.

How can we combat Poverty in Canada?

Read Article: Poverty in Canada has ‘child’s face,’ UN report says