This brief discusses the savings penalties in public assistance programs in the United States, also known as asset limits, and that actions that can be taken to eliminate these limits and the barriers towards building savings for families living on low...
This report examines data from the Federal Reserve System’s 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances to understand how the wealth of median Black, Latino and White families have changed since the findings of its previous survey were released in...
This study examines the rate of chronic low income among adult immigrants (aged 25 or older) in Canada during the 2000s. Data is taken from the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) for the period from 1993 to 2012, with regional adjustments used for the analysis. Chronic low income is...
The Who’s Hungry Report provides quantitative and qualitative data about the experience of hunger and poverty in Toronto. To create the reports, trained volunteers conduct face-to-face interviews with over 1,400 food bank clients at nearly 40 member agencies, collecting demographic data as well...
This annual report on poverty in Canada reports that a staggering 5.8 million people in Canada (or 16.8%) live in poverty. The report uses several low-income indicators, including the Low-Income Measure (LIM), the Census Family Low Income Measure (CFLIM) and the Market Basket Measure (MBM). Each...
How has the Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty (VC – CRP) network contributed to poverty reduction in Canada? In seeking to answer this central question, the State of Cities Reducing Poverty paper highlights the network’s numerous and varied...
The 2018 national report card “Bold Ambitions for Child Poverty Eradication in Canada,” provides a current snapshot of child and family poverty and demonstrates the need for a costed implementation plan to eradicate child poverty in this generation. In advance of the 30th year of the...
What does it mean to be poor in Canada? Does it mean having to rely on food banks and payday loans to make ends meet? Does it mean struggling to afford warm clothes for the winter? What about having to live far away from work or school? A new, two-part study from the Angus Reid Institute examines...
This paper has been commissioned by Prosper Canada to develop and present a working model of the relationships between financial empowerment and poverty in Canada. It reviews published, international, English-language, academic and grey literature, as well as documents provided by Prosper...
Increasing interest in the role that consumer-focused policy interventions can play in improving economic outcomes has led to a host of intervention models in recent years. Financial coaching has emerged as one prominent model in this field, aimed at improving consumer financial outcomes by using...
Financial Empowerment is an integrated set of interventions proven to measurably improve financial outcomes for people living in poverty. This brief from Prosper Canada recommends nine financial empowerment strategies that can help reduce poverty by being integrated into poverty reduction...
This new Poverty Trends Scorecard consisting of four reports now presents an update of the information on income, wealth, and inequality. Over three years later, the recovery has yet to fully take hold. The individuals and families who bore the brunt of the 2008–09 recession face continuing...
In this chapter I examine whether and how the relationship between family socioeconomic characteristics and academic achievement has changed during the last fifty years. In particular, I investigate the extent to which the rising income inequality of the last four decades has been paralleled by a...
This is the first in a series of @ Issue Papers that looks at the participation of traditionally under-represented cohorts in postsecondary education. The purpose of this @ Issue Paper is to summarize what is currently known about the participation of low-income students in PSE, with a particular...
This overview paper broadly outlines the types of strategies being used to help people move up from poverty. It lays out basic categories for classifying such programs, explains the logic of various approaches, and offers some broad pros and cons of various types of interventions. The accompanying...
The disability income system is an agglomeration of disparate programs that were designed for distinct purposes. That reality would not actually be a bad thing if at least all the pieces worked well together. A new Basic Income for persons with disabilities would enable the reform of both the...
The gap between rich and poor is reaching new extremes. Credit Suisse recently revealed that the richest 1% have now accumulated more wealth than the rest of the world put together.1 This occurred a year earlier than Oxfam’s much publicized prediction ahead of last year’s World Economic Forum....
Being homeless, whether briefly or for an extended period of time, can be profoundly distressing for whoever undergoes the experience. This portrait is the result of an exploratory study on homelessness in 13 communities representing five First Nations in Quebec. The report identifies the principal...
This working paper compares three commonly used measures of low income used in Canadian poverty analysis. It is the fourth in a series of working papers intended to promote a discussion by participants in our Sounding Board and others. Thresholds and incidences of low-income for the Low Income...
Good public policy matters and has been effective in reducing child poverty. Indeed, without government transfers over 2 million children would live in poverty. However, to date, policy inputs against poverty have been small and poverty reduction too limited. History has shown us that no one-off...
Low income lines are the most commonly used tool for defining and measuring poverty. They provide thresholds below which a household is considered to be living on low income. Low income lines can be constructed in different ways. This brief explains the LICO (Low income cut-off), LIM (Low income...
This report estimates the price of inaction. Regardless of the strategy used to address poverty, it asks, “What does it cost us to allow poverty to persist in Toronto?” It estimates how much more we may be spending in the health care and justice systems simply because poverty exists, and how...
The intention at the time of the creation of the Market Basket Measure was that the content of the basket and its definition of disposable income would be reviewed once several years of data had been collected using the original measure. This was necessary to ensure that it continued to embody a...
The Government of Canada is committed to strengthening the middle class and helping low-income Canadians exit poverty so that they have sufficient capabilities to be well and do well. To achieve this goal, we will need to form partnerships, modernize the existing landscape of supports and encourage...
Two years ago, our organizations released The Hidden Epidemic: A Report on Child and Family Poverty in Toronto, which documented the high level of child and family poverty in the City of Toronto and the widespread lack of access by children to decent housing, food, recreation and learning...