Archived Content

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Highlights

• Low income among children is a very dynamic phenomenon in Canada. Many children experienced low income between 1999 and 2004, but few remained in this situation for the entire period.

• While children living in lone-parent families are much more vulnerable to low income, those in two-parent families are not exempt from it. In 2004, half of the children living in low income were part of a two-parent family. In both one-parent and two-parent families, total work effort in the family and parents' working conditions were key indicators of vulnerability to low income.

• Despite sustained economic growth since the mid-1990s, the rate of low-income among children was no lower in 2004 than in 1989—the peak of the previous business cycle. Indeed, the gap between the net family income of low-income children and that of other children widened in the past decade.

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