December 2000 Fraser Forum:
Child Poverty & Child Hunger
In my writing on poverty in Canada, I have frequently referred to a popular "sleight of hand" trick used by those associated with the social welfare community. This trick essentially involves defining poverty in a relative (generous) sense but speaking of those falling below the line in an absolute (restrictive) manner.
A little illustration would be in order. The use of purely relative indicators of poverty such as a threshold set at half the mean or median income, or the use of Statscan’s Low-Income Cut-Offs (LICO), results in high poverty lines. Those in the social welfare community regard this as appropriate. In their view, poverty is much more than just the absence of the basic necessities. Poverty has to do with exclusion and the feeling of being left out of the mainstream (with mainstream here defined in a decidedly materialistic way). High poverty lines result, necessarily, in high poverty counts. Recent estimates, using the relative approach, suggest that one in five children in Canada are poor. However, in describing the living situations of those same children, we are frequently told that they are hungry, ill-housed, and are, in general, truly deprived. Such is the "crisis" of child poverty in Canada.
Estimates of poverty in Canada using a "basic needs" approach reveal that about 7 to 8 percent of the population are "poor" in the sense that their reported income is below the poverty threshold. Even then, it is not clear that all of those falling below such a poverty threshold are hungry or ill-housed. It is likely that many of them are truly deprived, but without other corroborative evidence, we simply do not know the extent of the deprivation.
This is why an article in the October 17, 2000 edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) is particularly noteworthy. "Child Hunger in Canada," by Lynn McIntyre examined a 1994 Statistics Canada survey of Children and Youth focusing attention on the issue of hunger. One of the questions on the survey asks: "Has your child ever experienced being hungry because the family had run out of food or money to buy food?" The author selected from the sample some 13,000 families with children under 12 for scrutiny. She found that 1.2 percent of those families answered in the affirmative. In other words, just over 1 percent of young children have experienced hunger because of inadequate family resources. Of particular interest is the fact that those families were 13 times more likely than non-hungry families to report income from welfare.
While there are some questions about the validity of results based on self-identification, there do not appear to be reliable alternatives. This study has been carefully done with the best information currently available. The crucial point is that only 1.2 percent of young children experienced hunger at some point due to insufficient food or money. While this is nothing to be proud of, it certainly is a far cry from the shrill claims of 20 percent or more by many of those with a social welfare perspective. This study serves as an important benchmark against which exaggerated assertions about hunger and deprivation can be compared.
The study, however, does not examine the reasons why children might be hungry. Why is it that some families with young children run out of food or run out of money to buy food? Is it the case that income from social assistance (and other government programs) is insufficient to cover the basic necessities of these families? In my research on poverty, I have examined this question several times over the years and have found that the incomes of welfare recipients with young children are generally sufficient to cover all of the basic necessities. While welfare hardly allows for a middle-class living standard, children in these families should not be hungry as long as the income is devoted to necessities. The fact that "Primary care givers from hungry households were 1.7 times more likely than other primary care givers to report daily cigarette use" (revealed in the McIntyre study) suggests that inappropriate spending may be part of the problem.
It is not at all clear that "inadequate government assistance to poor people" has produced the "semi-starvation" of Canadian children, as a companion piece in the same CMAJ issue maintains. This second article, entitled "Child Hunger: Semi-starvation Study Repeated in Canada" by Laird Birmingham, specifically blames child hunger on inadequate government assistance and on an apparently indifferent Canadian public. He states: "Ending the semi-starvation of Canadian children, a starvation that is implicitly endorsed by all Canadians who collectively have a mean income that is almost higher than any other country….." This strident commentary is hard to fathom. There is not a shred of evidence that Canada has "semi-starvation" of children or that what little hunger we do experience is due to insufficient income.
While the prospect of child hunger is obviously very heart-wrenching and emotional, some perspective is clearly in order. The McIntyre study provides some of that perspective. Child hunger is not rampant, nor is it a crisis. The evidence suggests that a small proportion of young children do experience hunger and that is clearly a concern. However, Canadians are not well served by inflated, unsubstantiated claims.
Chris Sarlo teaches economics at Nipissing University in North Bay, ON. He is the author of Poverty in Canada, published by The Fraser Institute.
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