Between 1984 and 1994, the average poor family was six per cent
worse off, the study released on Tuesday by the Canadian Council
on Social Development points out. It says that "more than half a
million Canadian families relied on public income supports to
keep them above the poverty line in 1994. Without those
government transfers, the number of poor Canadian families would
have jumped by 56 per cent that year," it says. A "market poor"
family is defined as a family headed by adults who are fit to
work and want to work but may not necessarily have a job. Without
the transfer payments, such a family would have been $5,700
poorer, the report says.
The authors of the report, Grant Schellenberg and David
Ross, use a "market-poverty index" which multiplies the number of
people whose work incomes didn't raise them to the poverty line
by how far they fell below the poverty line. They concluded that
poverty for the "market poor" got six per cent worse during the
decade under study. According to Schellenberg, while the
incidence of "market poverty" has remained constant, its depth
has increased.
The "market poor" in Ontario were hardest hit, according to
the report. In 1994, the earnings of the average poor family in
Ontario were $14,749 below the poverty line, even though Ontario
had the lowest percentage of "market poor" families.
The report ascribed the "causes of poverty" to three basic
reasons: low wages, unemployment and periods of time spent
outside the work force. 450,000 families were "market poor" in
1994 although one adult in the family had worked throughout the
year. Another 100,000 families were poor although both adults
worked all year. According to the report, "Quite simply, many
jobs do not pay high enough wages to provide even full-time
workers with sufficient income to adequately support their
families." Schellenberg stresses that many poor people continue
having problems just getting into the labour market "to find a
job, even a low-wage job, because of lack of affordable day care,
disability or involuntary retirement." The study concludes that
cutting government spending and debt, achieving lower interest
rates and hoping for well-paying jobs to trickle down to the poor
doesn't work. "Our findings suggest that the marketplace, as it
currently functions, is unlikely to be able to generate enough
well-paying jobs for those who are poor," the study concludes.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
