CHILD POVERTY

Child Poverty

Child poverty

Although the United States and Canada are the most advanced industrialized countries of the world, have some the highest rates of child poverty in the industrialized world. Some children are poor because their parents are working, but poor. Other poor children live with single mothers or recent immigrants. Children living in poverty increased stress on their physical, emotional, psychological and social welfare. That said, there are some industrialized countries have reduced child poverty rates through a series of programs and policies.

Gap between rich and poor

By many accounts, wealthier poor in countries like Canada and the U.S. are getting poorer and the gap between families of lower and higher incomes has widened. The median income for the poorest in Canada, for example, have increased by 18 percent in the last 10 years, while the richest families experienced an increase of 30 percent. Young couples with children experienced major changes to the floor, as their average wealth fell 30 percent in the last decade. Inequality has worsened in families with children.

Causes of Poverty

Children may be contributing to the poverty of families because they are a burden on family resources, however, research shows that in countries with more favourable policies to the family, disposable income falls only moderately when families with children. In 2007, Wendy, London School of Economics, and Jane Waldfogel, Columbia University, School of Social Work, used data from seven Western, industrialized countries to compare differences of gross and disposable household income between families with and without children . They found that differences in income and labour market participation of women were the main determinants of the gap in GDP and disposable income, taxes and government transfers also reduced the differences. This means that poverty rates are closely related to the parents-especially mothers-who have access to the labour force, receiving wages, and government policies designed to assist families in obtaining and holding decent-paying , stable employment.

Many studies have documented the rise of precarioUKemployment is characterized by low quality jobs, low wages and few or no benefit. During the last decade, Canada and the United States have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing sector, resulting in the loss of the largest undertaken, permanent jobs with relatively low education requirements. Many of these displaced workers to be employed on temporary, low wages, precarious, non-standard.

Children are poor for many reasons, mainly because the relationship of their parents to the workforce. Some are poor because their parents earn low wages and / or working in non-standard jobs, while others have parents with inadequate education or educational credentials are not recognized in North America, and some have experienced separation from their parents' civil and / or living in single parent households, and others have been affected by government cutbacks in social spending. The most vulnerable are the families of recent immigrants, racial groups, particularly indigenoUKchildren, children with disabilities, and (despite some improvements) living in female-headed single parent families.

Measuring Poverty

Countries like Canada have been running low-income rates based ...