1 in 5 P.E.I. children living below poverty line, report indicates

After four straight years of decline, the child poverty rate on P.E.I. increased in 2018, according to the most recent P.E.I. Child Poverty Report Card, released Wednesday.

Using data from 2018 tax filings, the latest report card found 19.4 per cent of children under the age of 18 were living below the poverty line, an increase of 0.8 percentage points compared to the year before. That equates to nearly one in five Island children.

The increase also puts P.E.I.'s child poverty rate above the national average by 1.2 percentage points. The year before the two rates were equal.

Mary Boyd of the MacKillop Centre for Social Justice, one of the report's authors, saysa key factor behind the increase in child poverty in P.E.I. was an increase in housing costs.

She noted in 2018 the vacancy rate in the province dropped to 0.3 per cent, the lowest in the country.

"That put housing way up," Boyd said.

Not a living wage

Boyd said wages are another issue. Even with a 15-cent increase planned for 2021 to bring P.E.I.'s minimum wage up to $13 an hour, Boyd noted that's more than $6 shy of the $19.30 determined to be a living wage in P.E.I., according to a recent report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

As a proposed solution, Boyd's group is pitching something called a job guarantee program a federally-funded employment safety net designed to provide good-paying jobs with benefits like child care for the unemployed.

The report also recommends an immediate increase in the minimum wage on P.E.I. to $15 an hour, and it recommends that amount be indexed to inflation.

Boyd said without government transfers like the federal Canada Child Benefit, the child poverty rate in the province would more than double to 45 per cent.

The report singles out P.E.I. as the only province without a provincial child benefit, and calls on government to implement one.

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