Poverty in Canada
Poverty is a difficult concept to measure precisely. It can be a term applied to an individual or a group, can relate to a geographical region or be associated with a division between rural and urban life. Homeless people could be said to live in poverty. They are often individuals who have a medical or mental condition, have suffered physical or sexual abuse in the home from which they have escaped or have lost family connections through bereavement or through other reasons. Whilst there are common factors in homelessness, each person will be an individual case.
The group aspect to poverty mainly rests on families. But what do we mean by a family? Is a family a single mother with two children? A married couple with two children? A widowed father with three children? Clearly there is no single answer. For the purposes of the analysis, therefore, we will have to establish a definition of the type of family we are focusing on. The Virtual Economy allows you to be able to do this.
What does this family look like? We might have a stereotypical image of such a family but in many cases it is probably quite important to understand the features and characteristics of such families because this might affect the detail of the policy we adopt.
For example, it might be useful to know the type of accommodation these families tend to live in, whether there are geographical factors involved, how much tobacco and alcohol consumption is typical of such families, how they spend their leisure time, their qualifications and so on.
The Essay on Children raised with Wealthy Families versus Children raised in Poor Families
Children who are brought up in families that do not have large amounts of money are better prepared to deal with the problems of adult life than children brought up by wealthy parents. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion? Families have different financial levels and some people think that this variety of the family budgets have an impact on children skills. I believe that ...
Poverty in Canada is defined as a state in which income is insufficient to provide basic necessities such as food, shelter, and clothing. There are two different types of poverty; absolute and relative. In absolute poverty insufficiency means severity whereby life is threatened. In relative poverty insufficiency is substantially greater than that of most others in the society.
The government of Canada has not got any mandatory line of poverty. The Low Income Cutoff (LICO) method of defining poverty is the one that the government of Canada has been using since nineteen sixties up to date. The Low Income Cutoff method observes the sizes of the family and the community that the family belongs to and measures the average percentage of before tax income that the family spent on necessities. So if a family of four (two adults and a couple) spent fifty-five percent of its pre-tax income on necessities that family then falls under the line of poverty by LICO. There are many other methods developed by Basic needs index (BNI), and Market Basket Measure (MBM) for defining poverty in Canada but those methods are regarded woeful and inadequate by social scientists for a number of reasons. Reason one is that those methods do not reflect regional differences or business circles. Last reason is that they do not consider that families whose income falls under the line of poverty can afford necessary food and services or not. Early nineteen eighties, poverty rate rose to eighteen percent but it gradually creped down to thirteen point nine percent in 1989. The growth of poverty rate and its declination fluctuates from time to time.
For instance in 2004, child poverty jumped to fifty-seven percent. People who are most likely to be poor in Canada are the old people who ages are over the age of 65, females, those people living in government town houses, single mothers, homeless including both sexs,and children living with single parent families. Visible minority groups, newly arrived immigrants, Central Americans, Jamaicans, and West Indians are among the categories that probability of them being poor is great. Generally, females are poorer that males in every category. Likewise people living in rural areas, probability of them being poor is greater than those living in urban. Public opinion lays blame of poverty to unemployment which is not justified because many poor people work full time but some of them are homeless. Homeless has it’s own problems such as physical and mental illness. Despite of government endeavors to establish sound life for all categories of people in Canada life of poor is not all that favorable. The poor are in some ways being deprived. For poor, dignity means human being. Many of the poor face frustration and despair because they do not get the freedom to do things the way they want it to be.
The Essay on Poor People Have Hope
This photograph was taken on a Saturday, so for sure the little girl does not have schooling on that day, she just found this this bag from the trash and decide to play with it. “Whoever shut his ears at the cry of the poor, they also shall cry themselves, but not be heard” (proverbs 21:13) in the Bible. This full of meaning photograph shows a really deep and sadful reality which is living under ...
, they do not have the autonomy. This is one of the ways in which poverty affects people. Another way is that politicians are the holders of power and they give directions to how wealth is to be distributed. So they distribute wealth in such a manner to keep them rich all the time, so the poor remain where they are. Some social attitudes and values from non-poor towards poor helps the promotion of equality in the society. There are beliefs that poverty is inevitable, so why should the poor be treated differently. Negative attitude towards the poor ca become self fulfilling prophecies, The Canadian ideology of wealth and poverty is a combination of hard working, ability, motivation, and other favorable personal traits. Poverty must be eliminated and to do so it is suggested that some attitudes of some politicians and their ideology need to be modified. Government must commit to developing new paths towards erasing poverty in collaboration with communities and organizations. Identifying the needs of homeless and helping them improve their lives through extrinsic motivators such as providing them with jobs and homes. Finally, there are a lot of existing ways of helping poor people. Actions must be taken towards those ways.
