CALGARY—There are fewer children living in poverty in Canada than there have been for more than a decade, according to Statistics Canada numbers released Tuesday.
Alberta has the lowest child poverty rate in the country at 5 per cent, having managed to cut its rate in half in just two years, between 2015 and 2017.
According to the 2017 Canadian Income Survey, there were 622,000 children living below the poverty line that year, an overall drop of 2 per cent from the year before and an 8.2 per cent reduction in the last decade. There were 1,162,000 children recorded to be living in poverty in 2007.
University of Calgary economist Ron Kneebone pointed to the national Canada Child Benefit and, at least in Alberta, the Alberta Child Benefit, as the biggest reasons for this improvement. Both were introduced in recent years to provide better income supports for parents.
“If you’re going to provide more income support for people who have kids, then you’re going to push them above the poverty line,” Kneebone said.
The report also found the rate of people living in poverty across Canada of any age had dropped from 10.6 per cent to 9.5 per cent.
But Kneebone warned that income levels are a blunt tool to evaluate poverty. For example, the poverty line defined for Calgary isn’t that different, Kneebone said, from how it’s defined for Medicine Hat, even though the two cities have vastly different costs of living. He also said the national poverty line doesn’t respond enough to changing housing costs, potentially painting a rosier picture of poverty in Alberta than reality.
“The conclusion I’d hate people to come to is ‘Wow, we’ve made great advances on eliminating poverty and we’re just about done with this goal,’” Kneebone said.
“If you’re low-income, then most everything you spend your income on is housing, food, utilities, that’s about it. That’s the majority of your spending. So if housing costs are really high, then just because your income went up doesn’t mean you’ve reduced your level of poverty.”
Sandra Ngo, research co-ordinator at the Edmonton Social Planning Council, worked on a study on child poverty in Alberta her organization released last fall. She said the Statistics Canada results were encouraging, and unsurprising, given the government’s efforts to provide more benefits to families. She also connected Alberta’s consistently low child poverty rate to the province usually having one of the highest median income levels in Canada.
“When you have a population that is doing relatively well, then it makes a lot of sense you would have lower poverty levels overall,” Ngo said.
“You can compare this to other provinces … that have a quite high prevalence of child poverty, like Manitoba or some of the territories. It really is linked to lower unemployment rates and a stronger economy.”
Statistics Canada sets the official poverty line with a tool it calls the market basket measure (MBM), which reflects how much the cost of necessary items like shelter and a nutritious diet compares to a family’s disposable income.
Ngo warned this measure can be less reliable. This is because the MBM is based off data collected in a national survey, rather than taking data from taxpayer information. This means when you break down the MBM data to smaller geographical areas, you have smaller sample sizes to draw information from, and less reliable results.
But Ngo said the MBM still can accurately show larger trends, such as national and provincial reductions in child poverty.
“I don’t think that that should detract from the main message, which is benefits have had a good effect on the poverty level,” Ngo said.
“It should just be taken with a grain of salt. For example, this might not apply in cities or smaller towns. But overall, I don’t think that the main message is really in jeopardy.”
Andrew Jeffrey is a reporter/photographer for Star Calgary.
https://www.thestar.com/calgary/2019/02/26/child-poverty-rates-drop-across-canada-as-alberta-cuts-its-in-half.html
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