A nickel and dime budget

from the Chronicle Herald

This story is part of a series that the paper the Chronicle Herald does on "The Faces of Poverty". They have a new story each Monday, and what follows is this weeks addition. - Kale

By BEVERLEY WARE

BRIDGEWATER — Bev Julian sits at her white plastic kitchen table and unfolds her Revenue Canada statement of income.

"This is where reality strikes," she says. "That’s what I get."

Her net income last year was $6,722. That money goes to feed, house and clothe herself and her 12-year-old daughter. It comes from the federal and provincial governments in the form of social assistance and tax and child benefits.

Ms. Julian spends $60 a month on groceries. Rent in their below-ground apartment where snow fills the hallway in the winter is $600 a month.

Her daughter’s father died two years ago, so the child gets an orphan’s allowance. But that $247 a month is taken off her mother’s social assistance benefits, as is the $68.12 a month Ms. Julian gets for a workplace injury she suffered years ago.

Ms. Julian ends up with $491 a month in welfare and dips into her child tax benefit of $314 a month for the rest.

"At 12 years of age, she’s helping to pay the rent. I sat down with her and said: ‘This is what I get; this is what I do with it.’ How else is she going to understand?"

Ms. Julian lives in a humble apartment building on the outskirts of Bridgewater. According to the 2006 census, there are 294 other single women like her in this town. Their median income was $25,446, while the median income of single moms provincially is $28,330.

Statistics Canada doesn’t talk about poverty. It refers to the low income cutoff, the threshold below which a family spends a greater portion of its income on food, shelter and clothing than the average family.

In 1995, the year Ms. Julian’s daughter was born, the cutoff for a two-person family was $11,221 in rural Canada and $12,843 in urban areas.

According to the 2006 census, the after-tax figure was $13,709 — twice what Ms. Julian got last year.

This means no treats for her daughter, hand-me-down clothes and no fresh fruit or vegetables for mom.

"I just have to tell her, ‘Dear, you want to eat? You want a roof over your head or to live in the gutter?’ "

Each day is a struggle, but Ms. Julian said she doesn’t feel sorry for herself because that’s all she knows. It’s her daughter she aches for.

"What hurts about it is other kids get to do things I have to say no to."

Ms. Julian has peanut butter on toast every morning. "I live on carbohydrates. When I buy fruits and vegetables, it’s for her." She was excited to be able to buy her daughter four oranges for $1 the other day.

"If it’s not on sale, I don’t buy it. You can’t plan meals by what you want to eat. You just buy what’s on sale."

She can make a pound of hamburger stretch over four meals.

"It’s milk that’s the killer. She’ll go through two litres in two days. We drink a lot of water" and splurge occasionally on a bottle of Pepsi.

Ms. Julian is at the grocery store first thing in the morning to get the marked-down meats, but meatless meals such as beans and eggs are far more common. Staples such as shampoo and toothpaste come from the local dollar store.

"I’m cheap. I’m about as cheap as you can get," cooking or baking with things that other people would throw out. Sour milk or outdated yogurt make wonderful chocolate cakes, she said.

They also take advantage of a neighbourhood breakfast program and clothing exchange.

When the cat got sick a little while ago, she cancelled the extras to pay the bill.

"The cable went, the Internet went, the phone went."

Ms. Julian bought little of what fills her two-bedroom apartment, and nothing is new. The chairs came from her friend Shelley, her table from Jessica. Annette gave her the computer desk, and her mother gave her the computer chair. The computer, TV and washing machine were all gifts from family members.

As her daughter grows, so do Ms. Julian’s financial challenges. Her daughter can’t take part in after-school activities like other kids. She only gets new clothes if they’re gifts from a relative. When she outgrows her clothes, four other girls in the apartment complex will wear them. "Clothes here get recycled, recycled and recycled. Everybody does for everybody."

This year, Ms. Julian did splurge, buying herself two new tank tops — the first pieces of clothing she has bought for herself in two years. They were marked down to $4 each.

"I want to get off assistance and have my health hold out long enough that I can work to retire."

Statistics Canada says education is key when it comes to improving a single parent’s income. Median earnings for single parents in Nova Scotia in 2005 who did not graduate from high school were $28,059. Those who went to college made $36,683, and those with a bachelor degree made $50,889

Ms. Julian says she accepts her life but if she had to do it again, she would have taken a different path.

"I would have stayed in school when I was a kid. Then we wouldn’t have to go through all this."

She quit school in Grade 9, eventually left home and ended up in Ontario. She had $37 in her pocket, and all her belongings fit in a single duffel bag.

She always had jobs, but they didn’t pay well and were not stable. She was a short-order cook, a waitress and a bartender. She worked in stores and factories until she developed carpel tunnel syndrome and needed surgery.

She once lived in her car behind a post office for five days.

"That’s in the days when I had a car." It was a 1977 Dodge Aspen.

She never married her baby’s father. He was neither husband nor father material, she said. Ms Julian moved back to Queens County where she had the support of her family to raise her daughter, but no job.

She now has her Grade 12 and is enrolled in community college, where she will take mechanical drafting this fall.

"I just love math. I’ve had enough of boring jobs. I’ve got to think; use my brain."

A research paper prepared for Statistics Canada in March 2007 said while the vast majority of single mothers are employed, they also have the most unstable income, and government transfers, such as social assistance and child tax benefits, are crucial to addressing that instability.

"In all age groups, social assistance appears to be the single most important fact in decreasing income instability of lone mothers," Rene Morissette and Yuri Ostrovsky wrote.

They also found that the number of single mothers who have jobs has risen in the past two decades, which means fewer single mothers are poor.

About 90 per cent of single parents are women, according to the 2006 census.

Antigonish mom Katherine Reed knows first-hand what it’s like to be a single parent on welfare while pursing a university education. Her children were eight and 10 when she was taking her music degree at St. Francis Xavier University, and her marriage fell apart.

Welfare got her through, and today, she works on projects for the local women’s centre while pursing her master’s in adult education.

"I don’t know what would have happened to me if I hadn’t gone to university."

Through her work, she sees the evidence that more single moms are working than in the past.

"The push toward training and getting an education and going to work is the critical thing that’s very different."

In 2006, Community Services Minister Judy Streatch introduced a program to help single mothers get an education by assisting approved single parents working on a degree or diploma that would lead directly to a job.

There were 50 spots, but only two people got in. Ms. Reed said that’s because few programs lead directly to employment. With lobbying from groups such as Feminists for Justice, the program has been changed and now supports single parents pursing a second degree.

The vast majority of single moms end up in community college or short-term programs instead of university, "and that leads to jobs that are not well-paid jobs," Ms. Reed said.

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