from the Progressive Econimics

The story of child poverty in Canada is very much an urban story. One out of every 10 children living in urban areas was poor in 2010, compared to one in 20 children living in non-urban areas. Three quarters (or 76%) of all poor children in Canada lived in one of the urban centres shown in the chart below.*Child poverty isn’t a question of jobs: the cities with worst child poverty only had middle-of-the-pack unemployment rates (out of the 19 cities, St. John’s, NL was 8th highest and Vancouver, BC was 11th highest). Similarly, the cities with the lowest unemployment rates in 2010 (Regina, SK and Quebec, DC) did not score particularly well in terms of child poverty. This is why it’s so important to talk about the living wage in Vancouver and wages in general.

from Canadian News Wire

OTTAWA, May 6, 2013 /CNW/ - Today, at the inaugural Women in Social Business Forum, the Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, discussed the potential of social finance as an innovative approach to addressing social challenges in Canada and released a report on the results of last year's National Call for Concepts for Social Finance.

by Peggy Taillon, President & CEO

Amanda Telford’s decision to leave her autistic son at a provincial government office in Ottawa this week placed a human face on a crisis that has been decades in the making. And if any of us think that this is a rare situation, or something unknown to policy makers, think again.

continue reading or visit the Ottawa Citizen article

by Edward Krudy, Reuters | National Post

NEW YORK — When Thomas Herndon, a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s doctoral program in economics, spotted possible errors made by two eminent Harvard economists in an influential research paper, he called his girlfriend over for a second look.

As they pored over the spreadsheets Herndon had requested from Harvard’s Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, which formed the basis for a widely quoted 2010 study, they spotted what they believed were glaring errors.