Inequality and poverty

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Hennessy’s Index is a monthly listing of numbers, written by the CCPA's Trish Hennessy, about Canada and its place in the world. For other months, visit: http://policyalternatives.ca/index
Minimum-wage workers are not just teenagers working at fast-food restaurants after school. According to the Manitoba Federation of Labour, 55 per cent of minimum wage earners in Manitoba are adults twenty years and older; 51 per cent of minimum-wage earners work for companies with 100 workers or more and 42 per cent work for companies with 500 or more employees. With approximately 38,600 Manitobans earning minimum wage ($10.45/hour) and fully 73,700 Manitobans making only 10% more, we need to ask if the minimum wage provides sufficient income to raise a family.
WINNIPEG—Low-income families face difficult choices: pay the rent or buy food; forego dental care to buy school supplies. Parents faced with these dilemmas are stressed and often ill. Their children suffer as a result, doing worse in school and enduring health problems of their own. These issues in turn cost both employers – in terms of lower productivity, absenteeism and employee turnover - and society in terms of healthcare costs, lessened purchasing power and lower tax revenues.  If families earned a living wage, many of these effects would be lessened.
Since 1999, Nova Scotia Child Poverty Report Cards have recorded changes in child poverty rates to track progress on the government of Canada’s 1989 promise to end child poverty by the year 2000. This year’s report card examines the period 1989 to 2011 (the year for which the most recent data is available), and uncovers some troubling trends: child poverty rates are still higher for children under six, and for children living in female lone-parent families.
Our infographic, based on the Nova Scotia Child Poverty Report Card 2013, takes a revealing look at child and family poverty across Nova Scotia.  (Click the image to enlarge)
Halifax—In 2011, there were still 29,000 children living in poverty in Nova Scotia, twenty-two years after the House of Commons pledged to eliminate poverty for children in Canada by the year 2000. This represents 17.3% of all children and is the fifth highest rate in Canada. Indeed, the province has made very little progress towards reducing child poverty compared to 1989 when 18.0% of Nova Scotian children were living in low-income families.
Graduating from high school is a rite of passage, but for students at risk, high school can be an oppressive and intimidating place. Programs like the Gordon Bell Senior Off Campus program (GBSOC) however, offer an alternative to the mainstream school system, allowing students to work at their own pace, away from the barriers they experience in the mainstream system. To better understand these dynamics, the CCPA worked with five at risk students in the GBSOC program, and made a film about their experiences. Film by Carole O'Brien.
Graduating from high school is a rite of passage, but for students at risk, high school can be an oppressive and intimidating place. Programs like the Gordon Bell Senior Off Campus program (GBSOC) however, offer an alternative to the mainstream school system, allowing students to work at their own pace, away from the barriers they experience in the mainstream system.
Two candidates in an upcoming federal by-election have made income inequality the main topic in Toronto-Centre. The CCPA's growing gap team created a short primer on income inequality that includes questions for candidates in the remaining all-candidates' debates in that riding. 
Ontario's minimum wage has been frozen for three years. Currently the Ontario government is reviewing how to set and regularly increase the minimum wage. This infographic compares the status quo of $10.25/hr to what a new $14/hr minimum wage would accomplish for earners and Ontario's economy as a whole.