Poverty is an issue that affects families across Canada and around the world. When families lack sufficient resources to sustain themselves and support their wellbeing, it can have an impact on everyone in the household as well as on community wellbeing.
Poverty has many faces. It can be manifested in diverse ways, including hunger and malnutrition, limited access to education and other basic services, social discrimination and exclusion, and a lack of participation in decision-making. As with many measures of wellbeing, poverty is experienced disproportionately by marginalized groups. People living with disabilities, Indigenous families, single parents, and racialized communities report higher levels of poverty.
SDG 1 aims to end poverty—in all its forms—everywhere. While it is a broad and ambitious goal, truly sustainable development that “leaves no one behind” means facing the unmet needs and inequalities experienced by all families in Canada and around the world.
- In 2020, 8.1% of Canadians were living below Canada’s Official Poverty Line based on the Market Basket Measure, down from 14.5% in 2015 (source).
- In 2020, poverty rates for children aged 0 to 5 (9.1%) and 6 to 10 (8.5%), and for youth aged 11 to 17 (7.9%), were all less than half their levels in 2015 (source).
- In 2015, one-quarter (24%) of Indigenous people* living in urban areas* lived below the poverty line, compared with 13% of non-Indigenous people. This includes 30% of First Nations people, 18% of Métis, and 19% of Inuit (source).
- Poverty rates in 2020 were disproportionately higher among marginalized populations, including:
- Immigrants (9.1%, down from 18.8% in 2015)
- Racialized groups (e.g., 10.8% of South Asian, 15.3% of Chinese and 12.4% of Black people)
- One-parent families headed by a woman with a child aged 0 to 5 (31.3%)
- Non-binary people (20.6%) (source)
- In 2021, 15.9% of households in Canada (excluding the territories) experienced food insecurity—5.8 million Canadians, one-quarter (24%) of whom were children under 18 (source).
- In 2021, one in 10 households in Canada (10.1%) were in core housing need.** Renters (20%) were nearly four times as likely as owner households (5.3%) to be in core housing need (source).
*Excluding territories.
**Core housing need refers to whether a private household’s housing falls below at least one of the indicator thresholds for housing adequacy, affordability, or suitability, and would have to spend 30% or more of its total before-tax income to pay the median rent of alternative local housing that is acceptable (attains all three housing indicator thresholds) (source).
