Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Canada's Child Poverty

One in 10 Canadian children is living in poverty, according to a report on the status of child and family poverty.
With Parliament's self-imposed deadline long past, it still has far to go on the promise it made 21 years ago to eradicate child poverty by 2000.
The most recent numbers show there is a 9.1 per cent rate of child poverty in Canada, down slightly from 11.9 per cent in 1989, the year Parliament unanimously resolved to end child poverty

One in seven children or about 121,000 kids in British Columbia were found to be living in poverty in 2008.
The poverty rate among B.C. children below the age of six during that year was 19.6 percent. This means that one in five in this age category didn’t have enough to lead decent lives.
The vast majority of BC’s poor children live in families with some income from paid work, with over one third having at least one adult working full-time, full-year.

Inequity is also growing. The gap between the incomes of the richest 10% and poorest 10% of families with children grew from a ratio of 11 to 1 in 2007 to 14 to 1 in 2008.

Families in the three lowest income groups (deciles) saw an actual decline in their incomes between 1989 and 2008.

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