Poverty in Canada
The poverty in any country does not grow over night there are series of events which make the people homeless and hungry. A country like Canada which is at peace unlike the other poor countries where there are a lot of conflicts and fighting taking place are struck by poverty. Canada is a strong nation in the western world which is in tangled by poverty this is indeed very surprising. The factor which hit Canada is not new, the immergence of globalization had some devastating effects on many economies around the world and Canada was also one of the victims. 77 of the Canadian population lives in cities and towns - the job opportunity is manly in the industrial sector. The job market is segmented into two parts one demands highly skilled labor and the other is low income making the income disparity gap stronger, the inquilinity in society results in poverty. Due to the advent of globalization the new trade polices has crushed the local markets because of which the local people are out on streets with no or very less paid jobs. The technological advancement has replaced man with machine further building the gap. The influx of poor immigrant has increase the number of poor people in the homeland. When a country is facing this situation the government becomes the support of people as it introduces new social schemes so that the local people can be pulled out of the poverty bag. But the Canadian government applied the opposite policy rather than spending more on the welfare sector they reduced their investment in social plans due to the pressure of IMF.
These causes and problems are present more or less everywhere but to understand the poverty in Canada its important to know that how one defines poverty. Because poverty does not mean that the people are managing in low income but it has a deeper meaning to it. Poverty is defined as a standard where people are not even able to afford the basic needs of life such as food, shelter and clothing. It is unfortunate that Canada has reached to the standard of poverty as now the number of people depending on the Canadian food bank has increased. It is estimated that half of the income of the lower class is used in paying the rents and a large number of people are waiting in line to get affordable housing in Ontario alone. The numbers of homeless people on streets are increasing with time. This just sketches the true picture of Canadas poverty which was perceived to be very strong but is cracking up inside.
The poverty in Canada is shaded into different colors as it is not the same for everyone. Compared to native-born Canadians, immigrants were consistently over-represented among the poor, and that this over-representation had a clear ethnic and racial color, with visible minority immigrants experiencing the most severe conditions. For them, the logistic regression models show, the odds of poverty are noticeably higher, even after controlling for all other relevant variables. The poverty rates of different generations of immigrants also show an unexpected pattern, in which those who have migrated during their adolescent years experience unusually severe poverty conditions. A comparison of the situation in 1991 and 1996 shows that human capital endowments are becoming less rewarding for immigrants. (Abdolmohammad Kazemipur and Shiva S. Halli, 2000).
Canada being host to many cultures is living in harmony apparently but this also indicates that invisible through the economic forces the discrimination is present in the modern society of Canada even the government cut back policy reflects its sensitivity towards the immigrants. This research is based upon the situation of 1991 to 1996, and so the condition today has worsened because the influx of immigrants has increased significantly over the period of time and the poverty levels have also risen.
The poverty level is directly related to the employment stability, the employment stability is dependent upon on a number of factors, such as, the condition of the market, the types of workforce required and many others. But now the level of poverty is determined by many other things as the world is becoming more global. This manuscript compares poverty dynamics in four advanced industrial countries (Canada, unified Germany, Great Britain, and the United States) for overlapping six-year periods in the 1990s, focusing on the impact of government policies. The data indicate that relative to measured cross-sectional poverty rates, poverty persistence is higher in North America than in Europe. Most poverty transitions, and the prevalence of chronic poverty, are associated with employment instability and family dissolution in all four countries. However, government tax-and-transfer policies are more effective at reducing poverty persistence in Europe than in North America. (Robert G. Valletta).
This research indicates the dissolution of family in the western world is also a prime factor in increasing poverty in Canada. The family system is a subject of the past in the modern society for which the society has to incur the cost because when family splits the young children are left helpless with no definite future they dont fall under the category of the high skill labor resulting in poor future. The divorced parents also faces problem of personal life which is affecting the professional life the motivation is lost to work and earn big that result in low income and more poor people. Another interesting fact that the European countries are trying to fight the problem of poverty might be because in European countries host less immigrant so the government feels strongly towards its people rather than in other countries such as Canada where the government adopts the opposite policy of cutting back on welfare schemes.
Canada is an industrialized country with its major exports being motor vehicles and parts, industrial machinery, aircraft, telecommunications equipment chemicals, plastics, fertilizer etc. this represents that a larger section of the society as earlier mention in the paper that the 77 of the population is living in urban areas. The setting of the people also effects the types of poverty a country is facing the concentrated urbanization dose causes a lot of problems in Canadas cities in 1986 reveals that Canada has proportionally more people in concentrated urban poverty than the United States. Concentrated urban poverty in Canada means not only poverty, but also high levels of a host of social dislocations. My analysis indicates that race and ethnicity greatly influence ones chances of living in concentrated urban poverty. However, it is clear that for the majority of Canadas concentrated urban poor who are white, a historical pattern of rapid immigration, manufacturing decline, and central city depopulation is at the heart of their impoverished status. (Zoltan L. Hajnal, 1995 )
The research shows that the concentration in urban sector creates poverty and social dislocation as the whites have to pay the cost of immigration in their native land the level of poverty has increased and has adversely affect the immigrants but the spillover effect has also to be paid by the local Canadian people. So its the responsibility of the government to take keen interest in the matter so that the lives of hundreds and thousands of Canadian can be changed which is includes their own people.
As a problem distinct from poverty, the spatial concentration of poverty, reflected in the rising number of poor neighborhoods, has some serious social consequences of its own ranging from concentrating problems such as crime, school drop-out, and teen-pregnancy in few neighborhoods, and the development of a sub-culture distinct from mainstream culture. Despite its seriousness, however, neighborhood poverty has not received much attention in Canada. The findings of the study clearly indicate that the urban areas in Quebec and the Prairie, Montreal and Winnipeg in particular, are most severely hit by the rise of neighborhood poverty. (Abdolmohammad Kazempiur and Shiva Sitall, 2000)
An area is considered as poor According to Wilson (1987), a poor neighborhood is the one with more than 20 of its population being poor. (A. Kazemipur, S.S. Halli, 1998)
This shows that poverty in a certain area creates a lot of social problems the culture of the society changes due to poverty in a certain neighborhood. The problems of poverty are not limited to just food and shelter as this research indicated that the identity is lost because of the social amalgamation due to the poor neighborhood as teens are dropped out of school the kind of environment that they encounter makes them the person they are, the wrong ambiance in the beginning can doom the future of the country.
The immigrants to Canada play a major role in the poverty of Canada as they are the ones who present the poor class in Canada. One particularly surprising finding was that the second-generation immigrants, who were expected to outperform their parents, had higher poverty rates. (Abdolmohammed Kazemipur and Shiva S. Halli, 2001)
This indicated that the immigrants are not progressing and the standard of Canada has been decreasing. The concentrated neighborhoods are not letting the next generation grow to its potential. its the responsibility of the Canadian government to secure the future of its people the immigrant living in concentrated setting should be relocated so they are able to define the line of the way to progress because if this continues the Canadian people would have to pay the prize because these immigrants are a part of their society which the cant deny so their betterment is the betterment of the Canadian nation.
The poverty level can be further dissected to gender and demographics. The women are more likely to suffer from poverty than men specially the single parent mothers. In the year 2004 the divorce rate was 37.4 this figure has an impact on all the aspects of society as it not only makes the society more vulnerable but also poorer because the poverty rate is more stable when there is family system. We simulate the consequences of alternative sharing rules -- from equal sharing to minimal sharing. Our conclusion is that it matters a great deal what we assume about how financial resources are shared within families. (Shelley A. Phipps and Peter S. Burton, 1995 )
This shows that how the society structure effects and impacts the poverty level in a country. The social classes and the social bonding among people add up to the cause of poverty. It is the role of the government to provide help and relieve to people particularly to women who face economic barriers even in the most modern societies.
The poverty in Canada is mainly the new poverty which is as a result of massive globalization. But the trend of poverty is deeply rooted in the society and is passed from generation and families because of the opportunities differences that are encountered by the people of a certain social class. Duration effects on exiting and re-entering poverty are found to be important, and models including past poverty experiences point to strong occurrence dependence for poverty entry and incidence. Fixed-effect panel data models confirm the above and reveal asymmetries in the impacts of household transitions on poverty. (Ross Finnie and Arthur Sweetman, 2003)
This indicates that the people earning a low income are the major victims of the collapse of the Canadian economy and are forced to live on streets because the governments have left these people in the time of difficulty. Poverty affects the children the most there shape of life is structured in those early years. The mental health is affected by the income level of their families where as the studies show that in Canada it is different for immigrants and the Canadian born. Compared with their receiving-society counterparts, foreign-born children were more than twice as likely to live in poor families, but they had lower levels of emotional and behavioral problems. The effect of poverty on childrens mental health among long-term immigrant and receiving-society families was indirect and primarily mediated by single-parent status, ineffective parenting, parental depression, and family dysfunction. In comparison, the mental health effect of poverty among foreign-born children could not be explained by the disadvantages that poor families often suffer. (Morton Beiser et al, 2002) The poverty and several other factors are involve in the mental growth of a child but future could be secured if the government play the role of a facilitator in terms of providing recreational activities and health facilities for the unfortunate.
The poverty in Canada is surprising for the world but it also indicates the adverse effect of globalization in the most western country which are more or less present but due to the support of the government the poverty level is maintained and the people are not dependent on the food bank for food and the housing is not very expensive. The government should take some desperate actions to increase the living standards of the people by providing them with social security irrespective of their class, creed or culture. Because the influx of the immigrants are very high in Canada but once a country accepts the people as their own by making them immigrant the government is responsible for them. The other factor which needs attention is the urban growth as the urbanized cites of Canada is under immense pressure because of which the poverty is prevailing in the major cities. The demographic attention is necessary because the children are suffering from poverty and their future are on stakes the education provided is not the only tool because there is high rate of school drop outs in poor localities. The government should try to take some measure to protect the family life to rescue the society from poverty and social tradition. The conditions of Canadian population can be elevated through some initial steps taken by the government and their poverty levels would decrease.
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