Child Poverty Report Card 2014
Date posted: November 25, 2014
Yesterday, First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition, with the support of SPARC BC, published its 2014 BC Child Poverty Report Card. This annual report contains the latest statistics on child and family poverty in B.C. Here are some of the key findings:
• One out of every five B.C. children lives in poverty. At 21%, B.C.’s child poverty rate is higher than the Canadian average of 19% and represents 169,420 children — enough children to fill the Canucks’ Rogers Arena nine times over.
• Children living in lone-parent families, the vast majority of them single-mother families, had a 50 per cent poverty rate in 2012, and were living on average $10,000 below the poverty line.
• The poverty rate for B.C. children living in two-parent families was 13% and these families were on average more than $10,000 below the poverty line.
• 24 out of B.C.’s 29 regional districts had at least 1,000 children living in poverty. The highest rate was found in the Central Coast Regional District, with a 55% child poverty rate.
• 80% of all Metro Vancouver census tracts had at least 100 poor children living in them, and most municipalities had multiple numbers of census tracts with child poverty rates of 20% or higher.
• There was a slight decrease of 0.2% in the child poverty rate between 2011 and 2012, and a nearly 5% decrease in the 13-year period from 2000.
For more facts and figures about literacy in B.C., see our Literacy Fact Sheets.