2014 BC Child Poverty Report Card released today

The 2014 BC Child Poverty Report Card released today by First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition says that little progress has been made to reduce child and family poverty in BC. At 21%, BC’s child poverty rate is higher than the Canadian average of 19% and represents 169,420 children. In their media release, First Call’s Provincial Coordinator Adrienne Montani says that we have failed to reduce child and family poverty in B.C. Findings in the report include:

• One out of every five BC children live in poverty.
• Children living in lone-parent families, the vast majority of them single mother families, had a 50 per cent poverty rate in 2012, and were living on average $10,000 below the poverty line.
• The poverty rate for BC children living in two-parent families was 13% and these families were on average more than $10,000 below the poverty line.
• 80% of all Metro Vancouver census tracts had at least 100 poor children living in them, and most municipalities had multiple numbers of census tracts with child poverty rates of 20% or higher.
• Cheryl Mixon, chariperson of the First Call Coalition says that a comprehensive poverty reduction plan for the province is overdue and that BC is the only province in Canada without one. The Report Card makes 19 public policy recommendations that would help reduce the child poverty rate to seven percent or less by 2020. These recommendations include:
• adopting the $10 a Day Child Care Plan;
• increasing and indexing the minimum wage, welfare rates and federal child tax benefits;
• paying living wages;
• enhancing Employment Insurance benefits and eligibility:
• and increasing affordable housing options for families.

Said Scott Graham, Associate Executive Director of SPARC BC: “The social and economic costs that result from poor nutrition, limited opportunity, and chronic family stress are huge. Failing to invest now to decrease the negative effects poverty has on child development for such a large percentage of our child population is a false economy. BC is not a poor province and we can afford to take better care of each other.” United Way supports both the First Call Coalition and the Social Planning and Reseach Council of BC (SPARC BC).