According to the 2010 BC Poverty Report Card:
— The number of poor children in BC was 121,000 – more than the total populations of Campbell River, Mission, Squamish and Vernon combined.
— Children under six years of age had a poverty rate of 19.6 percent in 2008. This is particularly alarming given the vital importance of the early years for children’s development.
— A single parent with two children working full-time, full-year, but earning only $12 an hour, would earn total wages of $24,960, close to $9000 below the poverty line of $33,933 for a family of three in a large city.
— The National Council of Welfare calculated that a BC two-parent family with two children aged 10 and 15 on income assistance received a total income of $21,016 in 2008. That’s a whopping $20,182 less than the Statistics Canada poverty line for a large urban area like Vancouver.
According to data and research assembled over 10 years by the University of B.C.’s Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) suggests that:
— 29 percent of BC children arrive at kindergarten not meeting all the healthy development benchmarks they need both now and in the future – lacking the basic physical, social, emotional or cognitive development needed to succeed. On average, these children can be predicted to do worse than their peers, at high cost to society, throughout their lives.
— According to Dr. Clyde Hertzman, “In B.C., in the most privileged neighbourhoods in the province, maybe 15 per cent of children are vulnerable. In the least privileged neighbourhoods, it’s up around 60 per cent.”
According to a report called 15 by 15: A Comprehensive Policy Framework for Early Human Capital Investment in B.C. by Dr Clyde Herzman and Professor Paul Kershaw:
— Any “developmentally vulnerable” rate above 10 per cent of children is “biologically unnecessary.”
— With “smart family policy” investment in early learning infrastructure and the proper child and parental supports, at a cost of about $3 billion per year, the rate of children at risk of failure could be brought down to 15 per cent by 2015, and 10 per cent by 2020.
— Kershaw notes, “the highest number of vulnerable children in Canada come from the biggest section of society, the middle class. This group is particularly hard-hit in B.C., Kershaw says, because no province is worse for work-life conflicts. B.C. parents work longer to afford less in housing, and struggle because of a lack of childcare options and support.”
According to one of articles appearing in The Province’s September 2010 series on Our Growing Challenge titled “British Columbia: The province that doesn’t look after their kids”:
— The latest available figures from Statistics Canada, using the after-tax Low Income Cut-Off (LICO) measurement, show that in 2008, 10.4 per cent, or an estimated 87,000 children, lived below this projected poverty line in B.C. That’s down from 13 per cent in 2007, but still the worst rate in the country.
