But the sad truth is that many Canadians struggle with poverty every day. We can understand why there is poverty in these third world countries, the lack of technological advances, agriculture and employment. Here in Canada, one of the richest countries in the world; there is a great economy and large market for employment in most provinces. A person that is not mentally or physically ill should not have any issues staying above the poverty line, yet there are thousands of Canadians struggling to find money to feed, dress their children and keep a roof over their heads at the same time. According to the Canadian Council on
As shown in Source E, the people with more income are for getting rid of the penny, while the more poor people are against the abolishment. This is probably because the more upper class people do not have to pay for simple things with the pennies they find on the streets. Poorer people who make less than $25,000 a year obviously don’t have good jobs, probably not full coverage health insurance, and a lot of the time, have more children to take care of. Due to the insurance they have, their prescriptions and doctor co pays are very expensive. Penny pinching may be these deprived people’s only option in paying bills.
When considering poverty, Third World countries, like Ethiopia, often come to mind. Unfortunately, even a country like Canada, where generally citizens enjoy exceptional health, education, a growing economy, and quality of life is so much higher than many other places in the world, struggles with poverty. Today almost five million Canadians are poor. Cities have experienced a dramatic increase in homelessness, newcomers are finding it more difficult to gain an economic foothold and young people struggle to get into the job market. For years the social issue focus has been on reducing the poverty.
The number of live births per year increased due to several factors such as children were used to work on farms (source of income) and in those days there was no reliable contraception and little education. The number of people dying was also high but still less in proportion to the birth rates. This was due to poor medical knowledge and poor diet, water and sanitation. More recently the birth rate has decreased and this is due to social, economic, cultural, legal, political and technological factors. A mixture of these factors led to the change in the position of women in society, the increase in equality, especially legally, including the right to vote (legal factor), the increase in educational opportunities (social factor) meant that women chose to educate themselves before starting a family, the increase in work opportunities with laws banning unequal pay and sex discrimination (social/legal factor)and changing attitudes in society meant that it was socially acceptable for women to be employed whereas traditionally the wife would be the housewife and the husband would be the breadwinner and would financially support his family.
Another problem with food distribution is that governments, like those in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are exporting crops to countries willing to pay higher prices as opposed to feeding its own people (Haviland, 2011, 2008). This practice was the cause of a famine in India during its colonial days, when British rulers used Indians to produce cash crops to support its manufacturing plants in the U.K. Because the land and labor was utilized to produce export crops, there were little resources left to farm crops to feed the people of India and led to a revolutionary uprising of the Indian people against the British (Lancaster,
Those who did survive now found themselves unemployed and possibly homeless. The nation’s economy relied on agriculture and certain industries, these two factors employed two-thirds of the labour force. As it was destroyed, the unemployment rate sky-rocketed. Grants and donations were sent to Haiti. The U.N. generated 2 million dollar to fund textile manufacturing as well as 130 million dollars invested in exports.
In her article “Food Stamps Should Be Expanded”, Linda Bopp states “More than 25 million Americans, including at least 13 million children, are not able to meet the most fundamental of human needs.” How can 25 million people go without food when America is one of the wealthiest and developed nations in the world? Over half of those Americans are children. We should be ashamed to allow our neighbors to suffer. Food stamps provide
If you pump in millions of new workers seeking jobs, it decreases the amount of work available. Plus, the laws of economic supply and demand will push the wages down far from what they would be. Another con is that immigrants, especially the poorer ones, consume a high amount of government resources like health care, education, welfare, etc. without paying a corresponding high rate of taxes. Almost all immigrants will start out earning very low wages, and unless they get additional education or training, they will likely
Child Poverty in Canada Since the late 1900s, child poverty has been a been a large issue in Canada. As Canadians, there are many things we should be proud of, from our large nation, to our natural resources and our multiculturalism, but the the amount of children that live in poverty in Canada is shameful. Canada ranks 24th out of 35 developed countries for child poverty. As a modern, developed country, it is the duty of the Canadian government to take care of the citizens that cannot take care of themselves, such as children, the poor and the elderly. Every month, 770,000 people in Canada use food banks, with forty percent of those people being children.
Poverty is an exceptionally complicated social phenomenon, and trying to discover its causes is equally complicated. According to the Statistical Profile of Poverty in Canada (2009), 9.2% of Canadians- some 2.95 million people- are living on a low income. These people are living under the low income cut-off (LICO), meaning that they spend 20 percent more of their after tax income than the average person on the necessities of life, such as food, clothing, and shelter (Witt & Hermiston, 2010, p. 226). These include children, families with single-parent mothers, aboriginals, the mentally ill, the physically handicapped, recent immigrants, and students. For me, as a student of ECE program, child poverty is very important.