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Child Poverty Essay, Research Paper

Poverty, is a problem that affects all citizens of Canada. This is an issue that will linger and become worse if not focused on. The reason there is such an abundance of children that are poor is because they are dependent on adults that are poor. The stemming problem of poor adults arises from the Canadian government. Poor social structure has lead to many families living in impoverished conditions. Children are the ones suffering from the social system provided by the government. They will be the victims of many future obstacles caused by childhood poverty. The effects and consequences of child poverty are very horrendous. With the aid off all people child poverty can be resolved and brought to a minimal state.

Child Poverty originates from the parent(s) of the family. The parent(s) suffers from poor economic and/or demographic problems. In order to receive a higher understanding child poverty, some definitions will be explained. The descriptions used by Canadian Council on Social Development are:

A child is considered to be any individual under the age of 18. Family is a group of individuals related by blood, marriage (including common-law relationships) or adoption, who share common dwelling in which at least one person is under 18 years of age. Lone parents also commonly used as single parent include never-married, separated or divorced persons not currently living with a legal or common spouse. Lone parents include only those with a dependent child under the age of 18 living at home. Two parents refer to married or common-law spouses. Two parent families include only those with a dependent child under the age of 18 years living at home. (4)

These definitions will be an aid to learning the conditions of poverty. These are the types of surroundings that impoverished children come from. It can be said that the children have no choice towards the poverty stricken environments. They are dependent on the parents for financial purposes and cannot escape the reality of financial struggles. Therefore, child poverty is the result of adult poverty.

Canadian Council on Social Development defines child poverty as “a poor child is one who lives in a family with a total income below the Statistics Canada low income cut-off.” (5). The poverty line helps the government distinguish between those who are living in poverty and those who are not. The poverty line, known in Canada as the low income cut-off (LICO) is determined as, any family that spends 20 percent more than an average family on food, shelter, and clothing. This means majority of their family annual income is used towards these items. “[As a guide to comprehend child poverty] . . . in 1990 low-income Canadians spent 56.2 percent or more of their income on necessities. Where as the average Canadian family spent 36.2 percent of gross income on food, shelter, and clothing” (Baxter 1993 2). If impoverished families spend more than 50 percent of their incomes toward necessities, than there is not plenty of money to spend on other needs such as transportation, phone, any forms of entertainment, birthday and Christmas gifts for the children. Food, shelter, health care and other necessities are crucial for children’s wellbeing, and extra income can make life more enjoyable.

Today the numbers of children living in poverty are rising quickly. Canadian Council on Social Development (CCDS) has given the newest statistics on child poverty “in 1997 1, 472, 000 children live in poverty in comparison with 1989 934, 000 children lived in poverty” (1997 Report Card, CCDS web-site). This is an increase of 58 percent, which is pretty horrifying. Within less than ten years the child poverty numbers have increased drastically. This means the goal of eliminating child poverty becomes more challenging. Canadian Council on Social Development also stated “the poverty gap, the money it would take to lift all poor children in Canada out of poverty has increased from 4.6 Billion in 1989 to 7.1 Billion in 1997″ (1997 Report Card, CCDS web-site). These statistics are negative signs for Canadian government.

The Canadian Government is partially responsible for children in poverty. The social systems they have set up and the social systems they have neglected. Minimum wage is a good example of where the original intentions of the government were to help the poor and low income people. In fact it victimizes the poor and low income people. Every time minimum wage is increased in which the government assumes will benefit the poor people; it puts them at greater danger. The reaction of employers towards the increase of minimum wage is to hire more skilled and qualified workers, or they may decide not to hire and give more hours to existing workers. This hurts any person that is seeking employment and especially the impoverished adults because they are considered to be less skillful and less qualified for the job.

Another glitch in the government system is rent controls. This is where the government has set a maximum amount that landlords can rent out their properties for. Rent controls were originally designed to provide assistance for the low income individuals. Affordable housing is a very important asset to the impoverished families, because one of the main items that majority of their income is devoted towards, is shelter. The only problem with rent controls is in some areas they are set too low and the landlords to not want to rent out at such low prices because they do not profit at such a level. To compensate for such losses, the landlords may incorporate “key money”, parking stall fees, or make cutbacks in housing repairs. “Key money” is the case which the government has determined the apartment to cost $500 monthly and to compensate from the lost profits, the landlords will charge $200 for the key to the apartment. Parking stall

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