The poor kids of Toronto

"It's always, 'we can't afford it, we can't afford it. It's very embarrassing on my part, being a mom." said Teresa, a mother in downtown Toronto.

A report says Toronto has the highest rate of child poverty in the country, a situation its authors call "the hidden epidemic." The report says almost 30 per cent of children in Toronto are now from low-income families, a situation that leaves them less likely to graduate from high school and more likely to be sick.

Co-authored by the Children's Aid Society of Toronto, the report also finds there are almost 146,000 children growing up in low-income families in Toronto — a number that grew by 10,000 between 2010 and 2012.

Children who do-without are affected physically, mentally and emotionally, according to the report. The report also shows child poverty is not spread evenly across the city's neighbourhoods or along ethnic and racial lines. Toronto is increasingly made up of low- and high-income neighbourhoods, and mixed-income communities are disappearing. For example 15 neighbourhoods have child poverty rates of 40 per cent or more. Seventeen of Scarborough's 25 neighbourhoods had child poverty rates over 30 per cent. Community services simply haven't kept up with the demand. People from African and Middle Eastern backgrounds were three times more likely to be poor than Torontonians of European descent. Forty-one per cent of people whose backgrounds are from Southern or Eastern Africa live in poverty, compared to only 12 per cent of people from the British Isles. Racialized Canadians earn 81.4 cents for every dollar that white Canadians do, and women earn 31.5 per cent less than men. Indigenous children, people of colour and immigrants, as well as kids with disabilities or whose parents had disabilities, are also at greater risk for poverty, as are children in single-parent families.

The city’s unemployment rate was 8.4 per cent in 2013, higher than any other major Canadian municipality. More than half of working adults in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area have no benefits or job security, or are in temporary, contract or casual positions. Not only do parents often struggle to earn a living, they also frequently lack access to affordable housing, public transit and childcare, and the government income supports that are available are inadequate to lift families above the poverty line. “Some believe that Toronto has emerged from the economic downturn,” the report says, “a reality not experienced by Toronto’s children.”

From here