Photo by Jimmy Dean on Unsplash
Canada's official poverty rate does not tell the full story of hunger and food insecurity in Canada, says a groundbreaking new report, Measuring Poverty with the Material Deprivation Index (MDI): Canada's Latest Index, released today by Food Banks Canada with support from the Maple Leaf Centre for Food Security and Maytree.
A new report, authored by Michael Mendelson, a former deputy minister and Maitree Fellow for Ontario and Manitoba, and Jeranda Noten, professor of comparative public policy at the University of Ottawa's School of Public and International Affairs, uses Canadian data to introduce the Material Deprivation Index (MDI), a poverty measure widely used in Europe to measure poverty-level living standards. The MDI reveals hidden poverty, showing that an estimated 25% of Canadians live in poverty because they cannot afford two or more household necessities. This is about six million more Canadians than are reflected in Statistics Canada's most recent poverty rate data.
According to the MDI metric used in Food Banks Canada's new report, 30 per cent of Canadians aged 18-30, 44.5 per cent of single-parent households and 42 per cent of renters experience poverty-level living standards, meaning they cannot afford two or more household essentials.
Poverty assessment goes beyond income
“A deeper understanding of poverty is essential to accurately track progress in alleviating economic hardship for Canadian households,” said Kirstin Beardsley, CEO of Food Banks Canada. “Implementing the MDI in Canada will improve our understanding of the scope and nature of poverty and help explain the gap we see between actual demand for food banks and the current official poverty rate. We urge the Government of Canada to incorporate the MDI into its official Poverty Reduction Strategy as part of a portfolio of indicators to assess poverty levels in Canada.”
“Material poverty indices are widely used in other developed countries to measure the impacts that households experience because they don't have enough money,” said Sarah Stern, executive director of the Maple Leaf Center for Food Security. “Developing and maintaining a material poverty index alongside existing income-based poverty measures could provide governments with deeper insights and strengthen programs to reach more people who suffer from food insecurity.”
Other demographics experiencing high rates of poverty living standards according to the MDI results include the following respondents:
Unemployed and looking for work: 55.5% People whose main source of income is government benefits: 55.4% People who identify as black: 34.4% People who identify as indigenous: 37.4% People with disabilities: 37%
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