The new face of poverty

By Garry Loewen

A few months ago, I was asked to give a presentation on the "New face of poverty" in Canada. At first, this seemed an unlikely title. In one sense, there is nothing new about poverty. Poverty has always been with us. It has always been a hard way to live, it has always been against God's will for humanity, and its existence has always been an enormous challenge to the Christian church. So why talk about poverty as if it is something new?

In another sense, however, the "face" of poverty is changing. It looks different today than it did a few decades ago in at least five ways:

1. Poverty is growing and becoming a permanent part of our economic structure. In 1997, one in five Canadian children lived in poverty, the second-highest rate of child poverty among industrialized countries (after only the US). Child poverty in Canada has increased by almost 50% since the beginning of this decade. Food bank use in major urban centres has increased as much as sevenfold in the last seven years.

Some argue that the measurement of poverty is faulty and the numbers overstated. Yet the method of measurement has remained constant over time and between countries.

As we all know, one cause of poverty is unemployment. In Canada, the unemployment level has risen every decade since the 1950s. It is time to abandon any belief that unemployment is a "cyclical" problem and recognize that long-term institutionalization of unemployment is taking place in our economic structure.

2. Having a job is no insurance against living in poverty. In Manitoba, almost half of the children who grow up in poverty live in a household where at least one parent works full-time. The problem is that the parents' wages are too low to provide for a normal economic lifestyle.

One pressure to keep wages low comes from the need to compete in a global economy. When corporations can move production to countries where wages are as low as 28 cents an hour, there is tremendous pressure to keep wages low here as well.

In Canada, minimum wages have lost over 50% of their purchasing power in the past 25 years. In 1976, a single parent with one child would have had to work 41 hours per week at minimum wage to reach the poverty level. By 1993, she would have had to work 73 hours at minimum wage to reach the same level. Under these conditions, it should not surprise us when some people lose their motivation to seek employment.

3. There is poverty amid great affluence. This is one of the most offensive characteristics of the new face of poverty. It has been estimated that the annual payroll for all 25,000 workers who make Nike products in Indonesia is less than what Nike pays basketball star Michael Jordan to endorse its products.

In Canada, the average household has $4 to spend for every $1 spent by households included in the poverty statistics. This gap is growing. Another glaring gap across North America is in the salaries of employees of major corporations. In 1960, the CEOs of major corporations earned about 12 times as much as their lowest-paid shop floor workers. By 1997, the CEOs were earning more than 150 times as much.

4. There are hardening attitudes toward the poor. As poverty grows, there is an increasing tendency to blame the poor for their situation. Compassion is eroding. Last spring, the Canadian Press reported on a single mother on welfare in Halifax who had won a draw for a package of disposable diapers. The drugstore at which the woman had made her purchase decided she was ineligible for the prize because her purchase had not been made with "her own money".

In Manitoba the government has established a welfare fraud telephone line. Citizens are encouraged to report welfare recipients who are cheating the system. While none of us would condone fraud, the implication that we need a special system to ferret out welfare fraud is offensive. Is there not just as much corporate or government fraud? Why are there not high-profile promotion campaigns and special telephone numbers to encourage citizens to report these?

Two years ago, Canadian law eliminated many of the rights to which welfare recipients could appeal when they were being poorly treated by government. Many provinces have implemented workfare programs which require welfare recipients to perform some type of labor in order to maintain their welfare benefits. There is plenty of evidence that welfare recipients are quick to apply for paid employment when it is available. By portraying welfare recipients as people who have to be forced to work, workfare legislation shifts attention away from the failure of the economy to provide full employment.

5. There are fewer government supports for poor people. As poverty is increasing, government help is shrinking. Most governments across Canada have reduced social assistance allowances, cut back unemployment insurance benefits, delisted health care benefits and removed special program funding from schools in low-income areas. At the same time, many governments are changing tax policies to benefit the wealthy.

Can poverty be eliminated? It can certainly be reduced. Through a combination of measures, we could make strides toward the new community of "shalom" which Jesus calls us to.

If you are an employer, you could ask if you have any employees whose wages are not adequate to move them out of poverty. Are you satisfied with the way the wages and profits of the business are distributed among workers, managers and owners? Can you arrange job-sharing, reduced work weeks or other such programs when employees desire them? Are you among those who lobby to keep the minimum wage low?

If you are an investor, do you select mutual funds that are committed to ethical investing? Do you give your proxy to shareholder activist movements who advocate for fair employment practices? Could you invest part of our portfolio in housing or programs which provide opportunities to low-income people?

As a consumer, do you try to purchase goods and services from producers who pay a living wage to their employees? Do you purchase from "fair trade" networks such as Ten Thousand Villages and Bridgehead Trading? Do you support employers who provide opportunities to disadvantaged workers?

Garry Loewen, who has served both as a pastor and as an executive with Air Canada, is director of employment development for Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba. This article is a Mennonite Economic Development Associates news release.

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