Media

All news

Fact Sheet - How are Canadians Really doing? A Closer Look at Select Groups

12/16/2009 7:00:00 AM

On June 10, 2009, the Institute of Wellbeing released its First Report, How are Canadians Really doing? The Report summarized the trends, highlights and interconnections among three related areas of wellbeing – Living Standards, Healthy Populations and Community Vitality.

The Report identified a number of groups whose wellbeing was significantly worse than that of most Canadians. As a follow-up, the Institute has taken a closer look at the wellbeing of four of these groups:

  • Canadians with low incomes; 
  • Aboriginal peoples; 
  • Racialized groups; and, 
  • Youth.

The paper that follows provides further evidence that low-income, Aboriginal, racialized and youth population groups are being left behind and are not sharing in the wealth, health and strong community that Canada has worked to develop.

Report Highlights

The following are the key highlights of the report:

People with Low Incomes

More Canadians are Working for Minimum Wage

  • The proportion of Canadian workers earning minimum wage grew from 4.7% in 2000 to 5.2% in 2008.
  • During the same period, the number working at minimum wage grew by three-quarters-of-a-million workers.

More Can’t Make Ends Meet

  • There has been a 42% increase in new clients at Credit Canada (a non-profit credit counseling agency) over the past year. 
  • In June 2009, Food Banks Canada reported a 20% increase in the number of Canadians turning to food banks each month. Nearly 15% of food bank users in Canada get all their income from work and still aren’t able to care for and feed their families.

Income is More Important than Literacy 

  • Among youth with average reading skills, 32% of those from the lowest income households did not complete secondary school compared to 19% from the highest income households.

Low Income Means Worse Health

  • People living in households with incomes below $20,000 are three times more likely to experience a decline in self-rated health than people with the highest incomes. 
  • Canadians with low-incomes have the highest mortality rates, the lowest life expectancy rates, and the highest rates of hospitalization and emergency visits.
  • Men with low incomes are 58% more likely to experience stress than men with higher incomes. Women with low incomes are 25% more likely than women with higher incomes to experience stress.
  • For every $1,000 in additional income that the poorest 20% of Canadians receive, there would be 10,000 fewer chronic health conditions, and 6,600 fewer disability days lost every two weeks.

Low-Income Neighbourhoods Mean Worse Health, Feeling More Unsafe

  • In Ontario, women living in the lowest income quintile neighbourhoods have 25% higher odds of a premature birth and 46% higher odds of a low-birth-weight baby. 
  • 18% of urban residents, 15 years and older, reported feeling very or somewhat unsafe when they were alone in their neighbourhood after dark. This increased to 25.5% for people living in the lowest income neighbourhoods.

Aboriginal Peoples

Aboriginal Peoples have Lower Education Achievement 

  • 34% of the Aboriginal population has not completed high school compared to 15% of the non-Aboriginal Population. 
  • Just 8% of the Aboriginal population has completed university compared with 23% for the non-Aboriginal population.

Income and Employment are Lower, Poverty is Higher

  • In 2006, 61% of First Nations adults aged 25-54 were employed compared to 82% for non-Aboriginal adults. 
  • The median annual income for First Nations people aged 15 and over in Canada was $14,517 in 2005, about $11,000 lower than the figure for the non-Aboriginal population ($25,955).

Health and Housing are Big Problems 

  • Between 2002 and 2006, the tuberculosis rate among the Inuit was 90 times higher than in the non-Aboriginal population.
  • The number of Inuit adults over 15 years who reported that their health is excellent or very good dropped from 56 % in 2001 to 50% in 2006. 
  • Aboriginal people are almost four times more likely than non-Aboriginal people to live in a crowded dwelling and are three times as likely to live in a dwelling in need of major repairs.

Feelings of Community Connectedness are not Strong

  • 54% of Aboriginal people reported a sense of community belonging and connectedness compared to 65% of White people.

Economic Costs are Significant, Benefits Could Be Huge 

  • The estimated cost of the use of government services and benefits by the Aboriginal population was $6.2 billion in 2006. 
  • If the Aboriginal population were to reach education, employment and income levels similar to the non-Aboriginal population, the government balance sheets would improve by nearly $12 billion in 2026, including additional tax revenues of $3.5 billion.

Racialized Groups

Canada’s Demographics are Changing

  • Between 2001 and 2006, Canada’s visible minority population increased by 27%, or five times faster than the growth rate of the total population.

But Racialized Groups are Faring Worse Economically than Others

  • Visible minority or racialized groups are three times more likely to be poor than other Canadians because of levels of education, barriers to employment and low wages. They are also more likely to be poor because of persistent social exclusion and racialization in the labour market.

They Feel less Connected to the Community – and More Discriminated Against 

  • While 65% of Whites reported a strong sense of community belonging, only 54% of Blacks and Latin Americans and 52% of Southeast Asians felt that way. 
  • 81% of visible minorities felt that they had experienced discrimination because of their race or ethnic origin. Nearly twice as many visible minorities as non-visible minorities reported that they had experienced discrimination.

There is an Education Achievement Gap

  • Provincial Testing of Grade 3 and 6 students in Toronto identified a clear performance gap based on race, income, marital status, and parent’s level of education. Some of the differences were as high as 40% in math. 
  • Lower levels of participation of racialized children were found in pre-school programs and sports and recreation programs. 
  • It is estimated that 33% of Canadian children (children of Canadian born parents) will complete university. Performance of racialized groups varies considerably with about 23% of first generation and immigrant children from Caribbean and Latin American parents and less than 20% of children of Filipino parents completing university. Since level of education affects employment and income, without appropriate interventions the racialized income gap will likely be maintained for some time.

Youth

Low Income Begins Influencing Health in Childhood

  • Young people’s health is influenced by their parent’s social and economic status and the effects can be felt as young as 10. One quarter of children in low-income, two parent families have some kind of psychiatric, schooling or social problems. This rises to 43% for children from low-income single parent families.

Minority Youth are Less Healthy 

  • White youth reported higher levels of wellbeing than racial minority youth and two times higher than Aboriginal youth.

Youth are Delaying the Transition into Independence.

  • A 2005 report noted that 40% of young adults in their 20s lived at home, a doubling of the 20% level from 1970.
  • Earnings of young adults relative to other earners have been falling over the past 20 years and young adults are entering employment later than ever before.

An International Lens

Canada has More Inequality and Poverty than Most OECD Countries

  • In 2008, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) noted that the levels of inequality in Canada were higher than in many other OECD countries. A more recent comparison ranked Canada 12th out of 17 countries. 
  • Canada spends less on benefits such as unemployment and family than most OECD countries. Working age poverty is a particular concern – Canada ranked 15th out of 17 countries in 2009. 
  • Canada ranked 13th out of 17 countries in child poverty in 2009. One-in-seven Canadian children lives in poverty. 
  • While Canada ranked 8th in terms of life satisfaction for OECD countries in 2006, it was one of only five countries that registered a decline in satisfaction between 2000 and 2006.

Some Policy Implications

Canadians Want Government Action to Reduce Inequality

  • 81% of respondents told Environics that during a recession it was more important than ever for governments to make helping poor Canadians a priority. 
  • 93% said that if other countries could succeed in significantly reducing the number of poor people that Canada should be able to do so as well. 
  • Another survey reported that about three quarters of respondents agreed that government policies might be responsible for poverty; nearly 60% agreed that most people are poor because there are unequal opportunities in society.

A More Integrated Approach is Needed 

  • Many of the reports and studies reviewed for this paper called for joined-up, integrated and inter-sectoral action. 
  • The benefits of a more integrated approach within government, between different levels of government and between government and the critically important third sector would be felt in policy making, program planning and delivery and in frameworks for measuring and reporting on wellbeing.

News & Announcements