If your child came home with a poor report card, indeed, one that never improved, how would you react? What would you do? There would certainly be a plan of action designed to improve the situation. Unfortunately, poor report cards have been the norm when it comes to child poverty in British Columbia. First Call recently released its Child Poverty B.C. Report Card for 2015, and the reading makes clear our inability to commit to improving the lives of children living in poverty in B.C.
First Call is a non-partisan coalition of over 95 organizations active in B.C. working to put children and youth first through public education, community mobilization, and public policy advocacy. The group has been tracking child and family poverty rates in B.C. for two decades: “Our first B.C. report card showed that one in five (over 170,000) B.C. children were poor. It is profoundly disappointing that 19 years later the data still shows that one in five (167,810) B.C. children are poor.”
High child and family poverty rates are one result of growing income inequality in B.C. and Canada. It is one result of choices made by governments to squeeze funds from public institutions and the social safety net in an effort to implement austerity on budgets. Yet government policies have led to the accumulation of wealth in fewer hands. Over the past 10 years, the B.C. tax system has become more unfair: in 2010 the poorest fifth of B.C. households paid about 15 per cent of their income in tax; middle-income households paid 13 per cent; and the richest fifth paid 11 per cent.
And it’s not just taxes. Did you know that the B.C. government collects more money from the Medical Services Plan premiums than it does from corporate income taxes? This is a regressive tax that affects lower income families disproportionately.
Choosing austerity when it comes to child poverty leads to false savings. By failing to invest in children today, we face additional costs in the future. Living in poverty means being more likely to suffer illness and have chronic health conditions.
The Canadian Medical Association reports that “poverty in childhood can be a greater predictor of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in adults than later life circumstances and behaviour.” Moreover, poverty in early life also means facing higher costs for the social service system.
Poverty can affect all families whatever their composition, but children in lone-parent families are far more likely to be poor. In B.C. in 2013, 50 per cent of these were poor. Yes, half! And some children are over-represented in poverty data: there are significantly higher poverty rates for children of recent immigrants, of Aboriginal identity, children of female lone-parent families, children in racialized (visible minority) families, and children living with a disability.
First Call’s report card offers sound recommendations that will help improve the lives of lower income families. The report summarizes the need for action with a call for the provincial government to “adopt a comprehensive poverty reduction plan with legislated targets and timelines and a cabinet minister with the authority and responsibility to achieve these targets.”
B.C.’s report card on child poverty is neither the worst nor the best in Canada, but over the years we have not improved. The B.C. government has certainly made improvements in its policies, but at the same time, it has also regressed in other areas. It is time to invest in our children and families now for improved health outcomes in the future. To read the full First Call report card, see their website at firstcallbc.org
