preview

Chapter Summary: Poverty In Canada

Satisfactory Essays

According to Chapter 1 of the book "Poverty In Canada", poverty refers to conditions where people lack resources to attain proper diet, participate in community activities, and the living conditions in the society they live in. Poverty can be absolute where people do not have enough resources to survive, or relative where people are not able to participate in common daily activities. The groups who are most likely to experience poverty in Canada are Aboriginal Canadians, women, unattached adults, people of color, persons with disabilities, and recent immigrants to Canada. The reason many of these groups live in poverty is because they work low-wage occupations. For groups such as, people with disabilities, people receiving social assistance, …show more content…

For Aboriginal Canadian, poverty rates are higher than the general population. Poverty rate recorded among unattached Aboriginals was 55.9% in 2000 and 31.2% for those living in families. Even for people of color, poverty rates were much higher than the general population of Canada. There are four main issues that cause high poverty rates in Canada which include: social assistance benefits, minimum wage, low-wage employment, and differences in employment and wages among groups who are at risk of poverty. According to Chapter 7, social assistance benefits are low and are not able to keep people out of poverty, in addition the gap between benefits and poverty line has been increasing. The principle of social assistance states that, it should not exceed the low income workers who are employed, and is not intended to give a adequate standard of living. In Alberta and British Columbia, minimum wage is an issue as it fell around $8.00 in 2010 and earners lived in poverty. According to Chapter 3, women, person of color, or recent immigrants are more likely to earn low-wage, along with young people and people will less

Get Access