Poverty rate in Sask. is falling but still sits at 9.2 per cent
More than nine per cent of residents are poor, according to latest statistics
REGINA Saskatchewan’s poverty rate has decreased by about four per cent over the past 15 years, but it doesn’t mean the work is done, says retired sociology professor Paul Gingrich.
“We’re still a long ways from ending poverty,” Gingrich said from an anti-poverty conference held in Regina on Wednesday.
About 90 people from across the province attended the conference put on by Poverty Free Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Council for International Co-operation.
Gingrich, who taught at the University of Regina for 35 years, was one of nine presenters there to share insight into the current state of poverty in the province and explore possible solutions.
He presented a report that summarized the most recent data (2016) on poverty in Saskatchewan provided by Statistics Canada. Here are some of those numbers:
SASKATCHEWAN’S POVERTY RATE
For Saskatchewan, the official poverty line for a family of four is around $36,000-$37,000 a year as of 2016. For a single individual according to this measure, it’s about $18,000 a year. In 2016, about 98,000 of Saskatchewan’s 1.1 million residents were poor. That is about 9.2 per cent of the population, and does not include First Nations people living on reserves.
Of the province’s 60,000 First Nations people living off-reserve, 40 per cent were in poor households, and 18 per cent of Metis people in Saskatchewan were in poverty.
DEMOGRAPHICS
In 2016, 25,000 children in Saskatchewan lived in poor households.
“The highest poverty rates are among the children (under the age of 18) in female lone-parent families and also ... persons aged 18-64 not in families,” said Gingrich.
Those poverty rates are 53 per cent and 27.9 per cent respectively, says the report. In contrast, the poverty rate for children under the age of 18 in couple families was 6.3, and the rate of persons aged 18-64 in families was 5.9 per cent.
Only 4.3 per cent of seniors had poverty-level incomes, with female seniors more likely to experience poverty than male seniors.
“Poverty is unevenly concentrated across the province,” said Gingrich, adding that this is the case in most places.
People in inner-city neighbourhoods, the north, small towns, on reserves and in rural areas are more vulnerable to poverty, says the report.