Living In Poverty

It is always a surprise and a huge disappointment in a wealthy, socially and technologically advanced country like Canada to be reminded that here too, people live in poverty. Most Canadians live comfortable lives. Admittedly to do so most people in the middle class work fairly hard to provide for their families and to ensure that they can live comfortably.

And admittedly because Canada is a country with a forward-looking social policy like all such liberal democracies, education and health care is universal. That being so, along with social welfare programs, people are well ahead of the game in being able to provide beyond the necessities of life for themselves and their families.

Several generations ago, however, people lived quite differently. The kinds of conveniences to daily living and the perquisites of living in an advanced economy with the availability at reasonable prices of goods that were at one time considered to be in the luxury category, are now considered must-haves. Ownership of a television set, cellphone and a computer and monthly subscription fees to services are now seen as bare necessities.

Living in a culture that is sensitive to designer labels or at the very least, less expensive knock-offs, everyone wants to present as being able to afford these durables that are only as durable as the next popularized fashion. And where at one time the poor were truly poor, meaning they lived in bare, cheap rooming houses at best and hygiene suffered through lack of access to adequate facilities, and there were few choices other than whole food, society has seen a wholesale change.

Cheaper, accessible convenience foods have become the norm, and along with that, the norm has changed from fit individuals to obese at every level of society, but mostly the bottom end. Where once people spent their day-time energies in work requiring physical exertion, service providers and office workers now pay stiff fees to fitness clubs.

There are more home owners in Canada by far than there are, for example, in Europe, and fewer people living in rented accommodation. And the latest figures coming out of Statistics Canada relating to poverty in Canada (Income of Canadians, June 27) informs that as of 2011, the last year for which figures are available, people living on low income is at its lowest level ever in the country.

People with incomes that fall below the agency's low income cut-off (LICO) fell to 8.8%. The previous lowest record was 9.0%, set in 2010. By comparison, in 1996 that rate that was termed the "poverty rate" back then was 15.2%. Which means that in the space of fifteen years the level was cut in half. In the first year for which LICO rates were calculated the rate was 25%, in 1965.

Statistics Canada calculates the average family gross income by the proportion spent on life's necessities; food, shelter, clothing. In the United States that would have to include health services whose cost for the uninsured can, when disaster strikes, become financially crippling. To that figure 20% is added to calculate the LICO. A smaller proportion of incomes is spent on necessities logically, with higher family income.

The LICO standard for the low income family was set at 70%, at a time when the average family spend 50% of income on those combined necessities. And it has fallen steadily ever since as families spent a smaller proportion of income on necessities, including those within the low income grouping. So that what is now defined as low income - $30,945 in 2012 for a family of four was once considered the average.

A smaller percentage of the Canadian population now lives on low income. They are considered those on the edge of poverty in relative terms, though their brand of poverty bears little resemblance to what it looked like back in the 1960s and long before. Good news by any measure. Small comfort to the fact that the use of food banks to aid people on low income is now widespread throughout the country.

And in every community within Canada there are the homeless who live on the streets and whose presence remains a living reproach to all of us.