The following piece appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on July 28, 1997.

Andrew Coyne's opinion piece "Stats Can’s poverty measure of relative worth" continues a series of articles by neo-conservative editorialists and columnists critical of Statistics Canada's Low- Income Cut-Off's, LICO's to social-policy geeks. These attacks on LICO's rely heavily on the Fraser Institute report Poverty in Canada by Christopher Sarlo. Some politicians even advocate setting government support levels at Mr. Sarlo's "Basic Needs" measures.

Their complaint is that LICO's are arbitrary and relative; they don't get at "absolute deprivation" (Coyne's term). One imagines that for neo-cons only life-threatening conditions are social problems. The opposing view that poverty is relative is explained in The Canadian Fact Book on Poverty: "... an argument frequently voiced against relative definitions of poverty is that a typical poor family in Canada would be wealthy if the family lived in the Third World. But poor Canadians do not live in the Third World; they live in communities where wealth surrounds them."

The list of an individual's "basic needs" though are just as relative as LICO's. They are determined by "needs" in a contemporary Canadian context. Their determination just as arbitrary.

Mr. Sarlo plays Dicken's Mr. Bumble estimating the minimal cost of meeting a body's caloric requirement. He audaciously asserts that a single elderly women needs only $17.48 per week for food in 1988, (or about $22 in 1997 prices). This includes 14 servings of fruit costing $2.11! For a single mother with two children he allocates $50.47 (or about $64.80 in 1997) per week for food including $7.82 for powdered milk - and sorry Oliver "no more".

Sarlo's budget provides no funds for school supplies - "assumed to be offset by part-time or summer earnings." I trust we aren't advocating child labour. His "modest proposal" also nixes funds for a hair cuts suggesting that spouses cut each other's hair. Some would consider this arbitrary.

The LICO's, like all statistical measures, are imperfect (official unemployment rates ignore underemployment and discouraged workers, the GDP ignores housewives). But, numerous studies published by Stats Can and others document the correlation between child poverty, (based on LICO's) and life chances; infant mortality rates, low-birth weights, school achievement, drop- out rates and psychological development. While poor children are not doomed, they face added burdens.

Mr. Sarlo presented Alberta Reports with a more comforting view: "When you look at poverty from the definition of the low-income cut-off, the deprivation you’re talking about is more like the deprivation of Reebok Pumps, leather jackets and video games."

Ironically, Sarlo has used fine words, in a Citizen article, expressing social objectives much like my own. No Canadian can be against the goal of a healthy start for every child. No one can object to decent’ living standards for all Canadian families. No one would object, I can say confidently, to equal access to education and opportunity for all children.” Yet I can not envision "equal opportunity for children" coexisting with extreme and increasing incomes inequities. While equality of opportunity and equality of income are not synonymous, its hard to imagine the "playing field" of children becoming more level as that of their parents becomes less so. Canada has the second highest level of income inequality in OECD countries.

If we were concerned about "equality of opportunity" would its statistical measure not be inherently relative?

I see examples of poor parenting at various income levels, Mr. Sarlo expressed a simpler view in the same Citizen article. Why do so many low-income families spend money on alcohol, tobacco, lottery tickets, etc. when they don’t have enough nutritious food for their children? This is to say nothing about the scandalous levels of child abuse and neglect.”

Readers need not rely on duelling statisticians to assess trends in child poverty. Look at the spectacle on major urban streets, overflowing food-banks and shelters. Look at the "new poor"; former middle class families, victims of down-sizing and restructuring.

Canadians should expect Mr. Coyne and others to continue their attacks on poverty measures and the poor. They advance the Fraser Institute's long-range objective, exposed via "This Magazine", of forcing Stats Can to replace LICO's with Sarlo's numbers.

Beware those who would address child poverty by discussing its definition rather than its root causes.

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Richard Shillington
Jan. 1, 1998

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