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A PROFILE OF POVERTY
IN MID-SIZED ALBERTA CITIES

by Kevin K. Lee and Cheryl Engler

January 2000

     

Section 3: Household type and poverty

Families play an important economic role in most people’s lives. Close relatives rely on each other, especially during challenging economic times. Through a sense of collective responsibility, individuals’ incomes and resources are generally shared among family members.⁵ Expenditures made by members are often intended to benefit the family as a whole, particularly for essential items such as food and shelter. Measures of income adequacy (such as LICOs) are usually assessments of the relationship between a family’s or individual’s income and their expenses. The following figures show that certain household types are better able than others to strike an economic balance.⁶

Households in poverty

Figure 3.1 shows poverty rates among different household types. By a wide margin, lone-parent families in the mid-sized cities were the most at risk of living in poverty. On average, over half (52.9 per cent) were poor. This poverty rate was more than five times that among couples with and without children. The poverty rate among unattached individuals in these cities was between that for lone-parent families and other types of families.

There was some variation in poverty rates for single-parent families by city, as shown in Figure 3.2. These families were most likely to have been in poverty in Red Deer (55.5 per cent) and least likely in Grande Prairie (46.5 per cent). However, the poverty rate for these families was relatively high in all cities.

Children by family type in poverty

Figure 3.3 shows poverty rates among children in lone-parent and two-parent families. While there were many more poor children living in two-parent families, those in lone-parent families were significantly more likely to be poor. Overall, children in single-parent families were more than five times more at risk of living in poverty compared to children in couple families. The figure also shows that poverty among children generally decreased with age.

In both family types, children under age 6 were the most likely to be poor. Furthermore, a sizeable 72.1 per cent of children this age living in single-parent families were living below the poverty line.

In all likelihood, the striking difference in poverty rates by household type is largely due to the ability of household members to earn income. On average, families gained 78 per cent and unattached individuals gain 63 per cent of their income through wages, salaries and self-employment in 1995.⁷ As such, household members’ level of participation in the labour force is a key variable in the income equation.

Increasing numbers of two-parent families are finding that both parents must participate in the labour force to afford an adequate standard of living. To a large extent, the entry of wives into the labour force has buffered many families from declining real earnings of working men and rising cost-of-living expenses. In contrast, single people and lone parents usually must make ends meet with only one potential income earner. Unfortunately, even if they are working, one income is often not enough to keep these households out of poverty. As such, these household types are more likely to live below the poverty line than two-parent and other multiple-earner households.

 

     

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