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Social Problems
Poverty and Economic Inequality
in Canada
Today’s Headlines:
London Free Press, Nov. 11, 2008

“Ending child poverty in London major
goal of youth agenda”

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Plan to spend $1 million to benefit children's services is
endorsed by city's community and protective services
committee
According to Jane Fitzgerald, executive director of the
Children's Aid Society of London and Middlesex:

"The burden of suffering we see is enormous.
London's children and youth, the citizens of
tomorrow, are counting on all of you."

For more, see
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Local/2008/11/11/7368931sun.html
More Local News…

“Hamper demand expected to rise “

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10 – 14% increase in demand for Christmas
hampers
With the economic downturn, more people are
depending on hampers to celebrate Christmas
Some who are applying for hampers this year
were helping to give them out last year
Watch the LFP video at:
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Local/2008/11/1
1/7368936-sun.html
Relative vs. Absolute Poverty

Relative: the standard of living for those living
in poverty is lower than the general living
standards of the rest of the social group

Absolute: those living in poverty do not have
the basic necessities for survival (food,
shelter, medication, etc.)
How Do We Measure Poverty
in Canada?

“Whether we define poverty in terms of a given level
of income compared to the average (an income line)
or in terms of the cost of a basket of goods and
services compared to the average, we still have to
settle on how great a distance we want to exist
between ‘the poor’ and others who live in the same
society,” observes the Canadian Council on Social
Development. “It is really a matter of values how
great a distance we are prepared to accept between
‘the poor’ and the rest of society.”

Excerpt from
http://action.web.ca/home/cpj/attach/A_measure_of_poverty.pdf
Stats Canada Measures:
Relative vs. Absolute

LICO (low income cutoff line): based on % of
income spent on food, shelter and clothing



LIM (low income measures) : 50% of the
median adjusted income


Varies by family size and geographic location
A relative measure
Relative measure
MBM (Market Basket Measure): the income
needed to purchase an imaginary basket of
goods and services at market prices

Absolute measure
Measures at the Population
Level

HDI (Human Development Index): a
combination of life expectancy at birth,
literacy and GDP/capita


Canada 5th out of 177 countries
HDI - HPI-2 (a variant of the HDI to measure
poverty in developed countries that includes
the concept of relative deprivation)

By this measure, Canada is 9th because of
unequal distribution of wealth within the country
Debates About What Measures
to Use

Choice of measure for poverty reflects…

A. Values

Social justice principles (for example, how poverty
is defined by Citizens for Social Justice


See A measure of poverty in Canada at
http://action.web.ca/home/cpj/attach/A_measure_of_p
overty.pdf
Or economic values (i.e. the Fraser Institute)

See Poverty in Canada by Sarlo at
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/product
_files/PovertyinCanada2006.pdf
B. Outcomes:

http://action.web.ca/home/cpj/attach/A_measure_of_poverty.pdf
C. Custom




Market Basket Measure defines necessities as
“whatever the custom of the country renders it
indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest
order, to be without.”
1996 Gallup poll tried to determine what “custom”
would define as a poverty line by asking “What is the
minimum weekly amount of income required for a
family of four, consisting of two adults and two
children?”
Calculated $29,637
At same time, Stats Canada LICO was $32,238 in
1996 while the Fraser Institute Christopher Sarlo’s
poverty line was $19,517.
Who is Poor in Canada?


Approx. 16% of single elderly below poverty line
Women and children: esp. in single-parent families


CCSD (2005) found that 1 in 8 (almost 1 million) children in
Canada living in poverty
According to Tepperman et al., poverty more prevalent
in:



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Urban areas, esp. Quebec
3 out of 5 poverty stricken neighbourhoods in Toronto and
Montreal
Non-white visible minority immigrant communities (studies
show earn 28-31% less than Canadian born)
Aboriginal communities (median income 61% of national
average in 2001)
Some Current Statistics…



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Stats show poverty declining in Canada…but, now with
the current economic downturn?
Using LICO, in 2004, 11.2% of Canadians
684,000 families (CCSD, 2004)
50% of single mothers and their children depended on
Food Banks (CCSD)
3.6 million Canadians live in poverty (2004)
Almost 1.7 million Canadians (5%) on welfare in 2005
(CCSD)
For more, see CCSD Fact Sheet at
http://www.ccsd.ca/factsheets/economic_security/pover
ty/index.htm
The Feminization of Poverty



Women make 71.6% of male income
Younger women (15-24) 63% employed vs.
74% of men
14.5 % of families are lone parent families
who make lower income, on average

45.4% of female-headed lone parent families are
living in poverty
The Working Poor




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Majority of Canadian families are double income
families to make ends meet
Working poor include families with jobs in the
secondary sector as unskilled labour or jobs that
offer only seasonal employment or lay-offs
Also those who are involuntary part-time
Many lack benefits
For the working poor, impossible to make ends meet
at wages that varied from $6.50-$8.50/hour in 2006
A Citizens for Public Justice
Report States:

The principle of social justice is defined as “the right
of all persons and communities to full participation in
the life and decision making of Canada, and to
adequate access to the resources necessary for a
full life, including access to adequate education,
health care, housing and child care, and our
communal duty to use such resources responsibly.”


Greg deGroot-Maggetti A Measure of Poverty in Canada (2002)
http://action.web.ca/home/cpj/attach/A_measure_of_poverty.pdf
Video: Lives in the Balance

Salt+Light Television Productions (2006)
Next week:
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Social problems related to poverty
Possible solutions
Please read:
Solving Poverty: Four Cornerstones of a
Workable National Strategy For Canada
(2007) at
http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection/HS431-2007E.pdf
Thinking about poverty:
Individual exercise

1. Locate yourself within the class hierarchy (based
upon such indictors as parents’ occupation, family
income, education level, lineage, etc.)


2. Now think about how your position within the
socioeconomic hierarchy has provided you with
specific advantages (or disadvantages).

3. What contrasts can you see between your position
and that of the poor, particularly in reference to the
ability of poor people to improve their life chances?
Thinking about poverty:
Group exercise
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Form groups of 4-6. At least one group member should
have a computer.
Choose a “family income.” Incomes will range from a
net income of 10 million dollars, while at the other
extreme, a net income below the poverty level.
Use online real estate sites to identify and locate
appropriate housing (www.mls.ca) in London.
Go to www.kijiji.ca and find appropriate transportation
Create a grocery list, and a clothing list and estimate
the cost.
Now, each group will experience some “problem in
living,” e.g., an illness, a car accident, etc.,
How can your group explain how you would cope with
the problem financially?
Social Problems Related to
Poverty

"Canada likes to brag that for seven years in
a row the United Nations voted us 'the best
country in the world in which to live.' Do all
Canadians share equally in that great quality
of life? No, they don't. The truth is that our
country is so wealthy that it manages to mask
the reality of food banks in our cities, of
unacceptable housing, of young Inuit adults'
very high suicide rates." (Professor Monique
Begin, University of Ottawa, 2008)
Health Problems

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“Social justice - or lack thereof - has a greater
impact on the health of the world's population
than medical treatment” according to a report
“Closing the Gap in a Generation” (2008)
Report findings state that the lower the
socioeconomic status, the worse the health
for individuals who live in poverty
Poor children most at risk, especially for
nutritional deficiencies
Other Problems

Substandard Housing
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Homelessness
Limited Schooling
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Gentrification removes low-cost housing
Poor children are less likely to graduate
Crime and Punishment
Political Alienation
Theories about the Causes of
Poverty
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Deficiency Theory: Innate Inferiority
Deficiency Theory: Cultural Inferiority
Structural Theories

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Institutional Discrimination
Political Economy of Society
Deficiency Theory:
Innate Inferiority

Herbert Spencer

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
Arthur Jensen

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
Social Darwinism: Belief that the place of people in the
stratification is a function of their ability and effort
The poor are poor because they are unfit
Advocates there is a strong possibility that blacks are less
intelligent than whites
Argues that 80% of IQ is inherited and 20% attributed to
environment
Richard Herrnstein


Argues that mental ability is inherited
Argues that job prestige and earnings depend on mental
ability
Critique of Innate
Inferiority Argument

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Classic example of blaming the victim
Stresses that poverty is inevitable
Appeals to bigots
Validates the IQ test as a legitimate measure of
intelligence
Justifies unequal schooling
Encourages policy makers to ignore poverty or to
attack its effects rather than its causes
Culture of Poverty Theory:
Cultural Inferiority

Culture of Poverty: View that the poor are
qualitatively different in values and life styles
from the rest of society and that these cultural
differences explain continued poverty
Critique of Culture-of-Poverty



Reasoning blames the victim
In reality the poor share the dominant values
of society
Also, the poor hold an alternate set of values
that are a result of adaptation to the
conditions of poverty
Structural Functionalism

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Some poverty is inevitable
Social pathology theories: personal
deficiency
Social disorganization theory: too much
change
Modern functional theory: inequality is useful
Functionalism (cont.)



Social inequality serves the function of motivating
people to work hard to gain resources.
For whom is it functional that professional athletes
earn so much more than child care workers?
Poverty is functional for those who work in the
poverty industry, e.g., government workers
Conflict and Feminist Theories

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Conflict analysis: poverty can be eliminated
Marxist theory: poverty and capitalism
Poverty involves more than money: cultural
capital
Feminist theory: poverty and patriarchy
Multicultural theory: poverty, race, and
ethnicity
Intersection theory: multiple disadvantage
Conflict: Political Economy of
Society


Under capitalism, the distribution of goods and
services is determined by private profit rather than
by collective need
This promotes poverty by:


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Employees pay their workers the least possible
A labor surplus is maintained to keep wages low
Investment decisions are made without regard for impact
on employees
Conflict: Social Structure


How society is organized creates poverty and
makes certain kinds of people especially
vulnerable to being poor
Institutional Discrimination: When the social
arrangements and accepted ways of doing
things in society disadvantage minority
groups
Conflict and Feminist (cont.)
Conflict



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Wage squeeze: steady downward pressure on
pay of lower class workers
Downsizing and new technologies create a
reserve army of the unemployed
Executive pay has risen greatly
If poverty cannot be eliminated, it could be
reduced
Conflict and Feminist (cont.)
Feminist
 Focus in on the gendered character of
stratification and poverty
 Feminization of poverty and intersectionality:
people experience oppression in more than
one aspect of their lives, causing increased
oppression
Symbolic Interactionist Theory

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
How is the problem defined? Typical definitions
include:
Blaming the victim: saying the problem resides in the
person with the problem
Culture of poverty: the poor have different values and
beliefs than middle and upper classes
Cultural capital: social assets, like values, beliefs and
competencies in language, that are required for
success
Tend to ignore structural factors like stratification,
sexism and racism.
Politics and Poverty

Constructing Problems and Defining
Solutions:

Conservatives: Personal Responsibility
Liberals: Societal Responsibility
The Radical Left: Change the System


SOLVING THE PROBLEMS OF
POVERTY

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
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More and better jobs
Improving welfare
Distributing the wealth more equally
Organizing the poor
Dealing with Poverty



Government funding of programs like
Employment Insurance (now running a
surplus) and Social Assistance
Government and private support for
shelters and food banks
Welfare state: a nation in which
government intervenes in the welfare of
its citizens through various policies,
programs, standards, and regulations
Can Inequality Be Reduced?
Proposals for structural solutions:
 Create jobs with liveable wages
 Incentives for low-income people to build
assets
 Tax benefits to low-income workers
 Economic assistance to low-income people to
deal with problems
 Invest in low-income communities
Solving Poverty (2007)

Outlines “four cornerstones” needed to
fight poverty in Canada:

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

1. National poverty strategy
2. Coordinated action plan and budget
3. Government accountability structure in
consultation with stakeholders
4. Set of agreed poverty indicators to measure
progress.
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