Tom Kertes

Comparisons between countries don’t answer if there is too much poverty in one place or another (for one thing, to answer that question we would need to start by asking it there could ever be too little poverty). But comparisons do let us know whether doing better is already being demonstrated by other countries – which lets us know that more progress is possible.

If knowing we can do better is good news, then reports coming out in the past month all point to great news for Canada and BC. That’s because most Western countries have far fewer of their residents living in poverty as a percentage of overall population. We rank at the lowest, just above Japan and the United States. Since the United States is almost always an outlier with Western living conditions and equity rankings, I think it’s fair to say that Canada is actually second to last, leaving a lot of room for improvement. Here’s info, that came out in September of this year, on our latest rankings in terms of poverty, including child poverty and elder poverty:

Poverty rates in Canada especially among children and the working-age population are among the worst of 17 leading developed countries, according to the Conference Board’s annual ranking on Society indicators.

With more than 12 per cent of the working-age population living in poverty, Canada is in 15th place out of 17 countries a D grade ahead of only Japan and the United States. More than one in seven Canadian children lives in poverty resulting in a 13th place ranking and a C grade.

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/newsrelease/10-21.aspx

There’s even better news for BC since we rank amongst the lowest in Canada, providing examples for how to do better both in Canada and beyond Canada. Being a late adopter makes it easier to catch up, and also means that there’s no excuse for staying behind. We should be looking at, and then copying, measures that reduce poverty and expand equity in Canada and other countries. And we should be also looking at the mistaken policies that result in higher poverty, both here and in countries like the US that seem committed to being the richest and the poorest at the same time.

Here’s what Policy Notes had to say about BC’s status as the lowest performer on equity measures such as the poverty rate:

So, there you have it; BC ranks as home to the highest poverty rate in Canada, which in turn ranks as among the worst in the industrialized world. The Best Place on Earth indeed.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.