Not Enough: The Meaning and Measurement of Poverty in Canada

K.J. Charles was Professor of Economics, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay.

The report under review was prepared by a task force set up by the Canadian Council on Social Development, under the joint chairmanship of Alan Backley and Anne Usher. It examines the definition and measurement of poverty in Canada, drawing on existing documents, published data, and the views expressed by participants in public meetings held in eight Canadian cities.

Convinced that mere data on poverty would not adequately describe the plight of those eking out a meagre existence, the report gives several actual accounts of the life situations of the poor across Canada. A major finding of the task force is that the majority of the poor are women, mostly single-parent mothers and elderly widowed women. “Poverty in Canada does indeed have the face of a woman, and feminization is poverty’s outstanding feature” (p.22).

The report supports the current definition of poverty used by the Canadian Council on Social Development, which consists of an income line based on one-half of the nation’s average family income. This, for example, locates the poverty line for a family of three in 1984 at an income level of $18,113, since the national average for such a family is $36,226. It is a national definition, which rightly makes no adjustments for regional differences but only for differences in family size and for disability. The wisdom of having one national poverty-line lies in its providing a standard by which progress can be judged and its underscoring of the need for regional income disparities to be reduced by appropriate policy.

The task force also has an interesting discussion on the “depth” and “length” of poverty, the former relating to the gap between the actual income and the poverty line and the latter relating to the duration of poverty. The task force rightly notes that what is now required is not more discussion but action.