Steps needed to reduce child poverty

One of the surest ways to ensure that government expenses for health care, unemployment and homelessness continue to rise is to maintain a high rate of child poverty.

A poor child often has a weakened physical constitution and is subject to recurring poor health over their lifetime and therefore requires higher-than-average health expenditures.

For children of poverty, education and work prospects are also below average with fewer completing high school and most occupying low-skill jobs.

That means lower-thanaverage income and, more often than not, a higher incidence of unemployment, especially during periods of reduced or negative economic growth.

The children of poverty, as adults, are often the last hired and the first laid off. And they contribute less income and consumption taxes

Many children raised in poverty are doomed to a standard of living closer to that found in the poorer countries in Africa and Asia than the norm in West Vancouver or the Okanagan Valley.

British Columbia is among the leading provinces in sustaining a high level of child poverty. In 2014 19.8 per cent of the province’s children up to the age of 17 lived in poverty. We have sustained a higher rate of child poverty compared to the national average consistently since 2000. If you are a child in a single-parent family, you have a greater than 50 per cent chance of living in poverty and that rate in B.C. has been increasing steadily since 2009.

Given this clear long-term trend, why has B.C. thus far failed so miserably to address this fundamental social blight?

Cynical people might say “Children don’t vote and certainly are not contributing to political campaigns, so is it any wonder that the issue is ignored?”

And, unless you work in the school system, in health care or with agencies providing social services, such child poverty is largely invisible.

Not all that many middleand upper-income British Columbians spend time in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (where poverty has effectively been ghettoized for more than half a century) and therefore the vast majority never really see it.

Here in the Valley, as I discussed last month, homelessness (one indicator of adult poverty levels) is viewed by many with a strong dose of intolerance.

Assuming our new provincial government wants to reduce the level of child poverty and stop building up the future liabilities it fosters, what can be done to actually reduce it?

Three coincident actions need to be taken. First is a significant increase in monthly welfare payments to families. These have not been changed since 2007 — though salaries of MLAs have twice been increased during this same period.

True, the government, beginning in 2015, ceased clawing back child-support payments, but the welfare payments themselves are not indexed to inflation. This is a very simple adjustment.

Second, if single-parent families are to get off of welfare, most parents will need job training. But a Catch 22 makes this virtually impossible: there is no lowcost, quality child care available. So what to do with the children involved? The implementation of a policy of providing or paying for child care as long as the parent is undergoing training is essential.

Finally, there is the fact the marginal rate of taxation for people on welfare can be high indeed. Any earned income can be, and most often is, deducted from the monthly welfare cheque. This really is an incentive to try to subvert the system — or to avoid work.

Child poverty will only be eliminated if governments (provincial and municipal), the private sector and religious and non-profit organizations collectively assume responsibility for developing programs to support children and their parents. We can beat child poverty if we have the will and determination to act.

We need to ask ourselves what does our society gain from having a high level of child poverty? Nothing that I can see.

David Bond is an author and retired bank economist. Email: curmudgeon@harumpf.com.