Poor not getting ahead
By ALLAN WOODS Globe and Mail Update A series of statistical reports released Thursday show that the while Canadian families on average are richer than their counterparts from the mid-1980s, poor families have been unable to escape poverty. "The vast majority of low-income families had no more in savings to protect themselves against unexpected financial hardships at the end of the 1990s," Statistics Canada said. The report showed that neither the median net worth - the point at which half of low-income families had more assets and half had less - nor the financial wealth of low-income families increased in the years between 1984 and 1999. In that same period, the median net worth of all other families increased 14 per cent and financial wealth rose 40 per cent. "At the end of the 1990s, the vast majority of low-income families had no more in savings to protect themselves against adverse events than...the mid-1980s," the report stated. Net worth is defined as the difference between total assets and total debts. Financial wealth measures the assets a family could use in the event of an emergency without selling off its house or business. But, StatsCan numbers paint a much rosy picture for Canada's wealthier families. The country's high-tech sector drove up the median income of the average Canadian family. Ontario regions like Ottawa-Hull, Windsor, and Oshawa, while traditionally working and middle-class centres, showed substantial increases in median income. Ottawa-Hull, in fact, surpassed Oshawa and Windsor in 2000 as the census metropolitan area with the highest median family income, $65,500 per annum. But Oshawa wasn't far behind at $64,700. The slowdown in that volatile sector, cautions the report, means those numbers aren't likely to be duplicated once 2001 and 2002 data is analyzed. Another study, using statistics from 1998, showed that one in six Canadian families had trouble keeping up with payments. The likelihood of a family falling behind on credit card bills, mortgage payments and rent increased when the major income recipient was between the ages of 25 and 34 (50 per cent) and with the number of additional children. Fourteen per cent of families with one child fell behind in payments compared to 20 per cent of families with three or more children. Only 10 per cent of those families with no children had trouble making payments. The study also found that families who had previously filed for bankruptcy were 1.6 times more likely to experience financial difficulty again later in life. A third study released Thursday by the national statistics agency found that out of all families in Canada, wealth is increasing steadily. "Median family income rose for the fourth straight year in 2000, but it was still slightly less than what a family would have received as income a decade earlier," the report stated. Using figures for 2000, it showed that the median income - the point where half of family incomes were above and half below - rose 2.2 per cent to $51,000. That number has been on the rise since 1997. The median income for a lone parent increased by 5.7 per cent to $25,400.
