First Call’s 25th Child Poverty Report Card indicates a continuing gradual decrease in the BC child poverty rate since 2010, to 18.5%, but expresses concern that “progress is not fast enough for children whose health and development are at risk because they are poor”.

The 2021 report, No One Left Behind: Strategies for an Inclusive Recovery, highlights the dramatic disparity between the average total incomes of the richest and poorest 10% of families with children in B.C.

The key finding identified by the report include:

• Nearly 1 in 5 children lived in poverty (1,313,400 or 17.7%) in 2019

• The national child poverty rate declined by .5 of a percentage points between 2018-2019, representing an additional 24,170 lifted out of poverty. At this rate, it would take 54 more years to end child poverty.

• The child poverty rate is higher (18.5%) for children under six than all children.

• The reduction in poverty associated with the Canada Child Benefit will continue to stall. The benefit cannot move eligible families in deep poverty out. The maximum CCB was $6,639 for each child under six and $5,602 for each child between the ages of six and seventeen in 2019.

• Canada’s universal childcare plan must include low-income children with a sliding scale fee model of $0 to $10 maximum.

• Care work should be decent work. The care economy (including health, childcare, education) represents 21.1% of all jobs and generates 12% of GDP and must be central to an inclusive recovery.

• Canada still needs a national pharmacare plan, which should be expanded to include dental, vision, rehabilitation.

The report contains twenty-two child poverty reduction recommendations for the provincial government, including:

·      indexing the BC Child Opportunity Benefit to inflation to ensure the value of the benefit does not erode over time

·      ensuring the provincial government’s direct and contract employees are paid a living wage

·      continuing to prioritize new child care investments

The B.C. Report Card is available at: British Columbia Report

The B.C. Report Card notes that, provincially, “the families in the highest income decile collected 24 times what the families in the lowest income decile made. This was a larger disparity than the Canadian average ratio of 20. The disparity for lone-parent families in BC was more than twice as high, with the average income for the top 10% of lone-parent families at 54 times the average income for lone-parent families in the lowest decile.”

“Arab, Korean, and West Asian children had more than double or triple the risk of poverty compared to non-visible minority children. The last Census also recorded a 44.9% poverty rate for new immigrant children in BC.”

“The on-reserve child poverty rate in 2019 was also higher. The average child poverty rate on sixty-four BC First Nations reserves in 2019 was 40.9%, with at least 5,510 children living in poverty. The child poverty rate was much higher on rural reserves (47.3%) than on urban reserves (35.4%), with 2,980 children on rural reserves living in poverty and 2,530 children on urban reserves living in poverty.”

The B.C. Report Card summary concludes:

We know the improved Canada Child Benefit that was implemented in 2017 has helped to lift some families out of deep poverty but many eligible families are not receiving the benefit. The federal government must ensure that all families who are entitled to the benefit receive it by reducing barriers related to tax filing and other administrative tests.

We can predict the improved BC Child Opportunity Benefit that families started receiving in October 2020 will have a positive impact for families and look forward to seeing the data in 2022.

While the full and long-term economic effects of the pandemic on children and youth in BC are still not known, we do know that government income benefits are crucial to child and youth well-being along with safe and affordable housing, food security, online access, child care, public education, mental health supports and other social services.

Lifting families out of poverty in the COVID-19 recovery period will require coordinated efforts between all levels of government. This year’s 25th Annual Child Poverty Report Card highlight stories from struggling families shows we still have a long way to go in BC to ensure all children and youth have what they need to thrive.

First Call are currently mid-way through a Vancouver Foundation funded project to scale up their research, including:

·      offering more data on smaller geographic areas

·      identifying local system opportunities

·      empowering leaders with tools and training to advance policy and practices to reduce child and family poverty.