BC Kids Poverty Rate Dropped with COVID Supports

Photo by Ana Klipper on Unsplash

The 2022 BC Child Poverty Report Card, released by First Call in February, marked a record low for child poverty rates in Canada and in B.C. due to a variety of short-term pandemic benefits, one-time financial benefits, and changes to the Canada Child Benefit, however, the report suggests, “Progress made towards decreasing both the rate and depth of family poverty in 2020 may be all but wiped out by increasing costs in 2023.”

The report looks at the history of child poverty in Canada and B.C. in the 33 years since the unanimous commitment made by the House of Commons to end child poverty by the year 2000.

·      1989: The child poverty rate was 22.0% in Canada and 21.9% in B.C.

·      2000: B.C.’s child poverty rate reached a thirty-year high at 27 .6%

·      2020: B.C.’s child poverty rate hit a record low of 13/3%. Canada’s child poverty rate also hit a record low of 13/5%.

The report sounds the warning note: “While progress has been made, one in eight children in B.C. were still living in poverty in 2020. Additionally, we are warned that the number of children in poverty will likely increase after 2020 because temporary pandemic supports have been withdrawn and inflation is dramatically increasing the cost of living for Canadian families.”

In an interview with CBC’s The Early Edition, First Call’s Executive Director, Adrienne Montani commented that “this is a blip year, but it’s a lesson year” and that without government transfers in 2020 the poverty rate in B.C. for that year would have been around 30 per cent.

While only 20% of children in B.C. were in lone-parent families in 2020, more than half (58.6%) of all children living in poverty in B.C. were in lone-parent families. “There were 65,230 poor children in lone-parent families in BC, compared to 46,130 poor children in couple families.”

The report also notes that childhood poverty rates were “dramatically higher” among children living on First Nation reserves and amongst recent immigrants. Average child poverty rates on 59 B.C. reserves was 29.2%, and for rural reserves, 33.9%. One in five recently immigrated children were living in poverty in B.C. in 2020.

The report makes 25 recommendations grouped under the categories of:

·      Tax fairness and income support

·      Targeted initiatives for groups over-represented in poverty data

·      Lower barriers and improved lives through universal programs

·      Replacement of the Market Basket Measure with the Census Family Low Income Measure After Tax (CFLIM-AT), calculated with annual tax filer data, as Canada’s and B.C.’s official measure of poverty.

Adrienne Montani noted, “The majority of poor kids still live with families who are in the workforce.” As well as access to affordable childcare, the recommendations include raising income and disability assistance, paying living wages, ensuring universal maternity and paternal leave benefits, automatically enrolling young people leaving foster care into an income support program, providing adequate funding for child welfare services on reserve and scaling up funding for social and affordable housing.