Low income stats questioned

from The Richmond News

Richmond's child poverty highest in region: First Call

Nelson Bennett
Richmond News

Richmond has the dubious distinction of having the highest child poverty rate in the Lower Mainland, according to the youth advocacy group First Call.

However, it's a distinction based on a faulty definition of poverty, according to the Fraser Institute.

Census figures for 2006 show Richmond has the highest rate of what First Call defines as child poverty rates: 26 per cent, compared to 24.4 per cent in Burnaby, 22.8 per cent in Vancouver, and 17.3 per cent in Surrey.

Mayor Malcolm Brodie acknowledges there are pockets of low-income residents in Richmond, but he wondered how First Call came to the conclusion that it did.

"I would like to know what are the criteria that are being set out," he said.

The income rates used by First Call are pulled from what Statistics Canada calls "low income cutoff" benchmarks, which Niels Veldhuis, an economist with the Fraser Institute, says is not an accurate definition of poverty.

"This cannot be used to measure poverty," Veldhuis said. "What a low-income measure is, is how well off people are relative to the average."

The 2006 Census is the first one to contain income statistics based on income tax returns. But using those numbers to get a handle on how Canadians are actually faring can be tricky.