Working Poor

The `Working Poor ' in Canada

Introduction

The common belief in the wealthy industrialized countries is that work 'pays the way out of poverty ' and as such , work and poverty are mutually exclusive , that is , anyone who has a paid job should be able to live decently (Fortin and Fleury , 2004

.4 . Unfortunately , this is far from the case in several countries , Canada inclusive . Indeed , one of the primary social problems Canadians face today is that paid work does not guarantee an above-poverty-line standard of living , or an 'adequate family income (Jackson

, 2006a

.1

The present reality in the country is that the growing job insecurity in various ramifications and low hourly wages have together with other factors created a Canadian society where more than half of all working age families , including half of low-income families with children live in poverty today , and as such are categorized as 'working poor . Jackson (2006a ) also pointed out that recent studies indicate that the percentage of low wage workers have not reduced over the past twenty five years and when adjusted for inflation , real wages appear to have stagnated since the early 1980s for the entire bottom half of the workforce (Jackson , 2006a

.1 2006b

.6 . This intends to present the working poor case from a human right perspective and then argue that a broad mix of policies , that transcends the recent move towards wage supplement , is required to effectively raise the living conditions for poor and thus reduce the population of working poor

Defining `Working Poor

Finding an appropriate definition for the term `working poor ' is not an easy task , for a couple of reasons . The most significant of these is that poverty is often culturally viewed as the lack of the most basic things in life (Osberg , 2000 in fact the primary dictionary meaning of the word `poverty ' is want of necessities of life (Oxford , 1998 br

.1135 . However , one can only lack the basic necessities of life , when there is no source of income . On the other hand , `work ' implies that an individual enjoys a source of income and thus the wherewithal to afford life 's necessities . Another problem is that poverty is most often associated with families , while working is associated with individuals (Chen , 2005 ,

.5 . The meeting of both `poverty ' and `working ' in the same individual , as is the case with the working poor , is therefore , a difficult concept to define

However , for research purposes , different authors have adopted varying understanding of this concept . In this respect , Chen (2005 ) defined `working poor ' as workers aged 16 to 64 who were employed at least 27 weeks in a year and whose equivalent income falls below the poverty line (one-half of the national median (Chen , 2005 ,

.5 . Fortin and Fleury (2004 , on the other hand defined a worker as an individual who is aged 18 to 64 , who is not a full time student and worked for pay at least 910 hours in the...