Welfare incomes keep almost all households living below the poverty line: Latest Welfare in Canada report
Maytree’s latest edition of Welfare in Canada shows that households who received social assistance continued to live on incomes that were below the official poverty line in 2023. A large majority of households receiving social assistance also lived in deep poverty, or 75 per cent of the poverty line.
“Total welfare incomes were once again deeply inadequate in 2023,” said Jennefer Laidley, lead author and researcher of the report. “When nearly three quarters of households are living on incomes below deep poverty, and all but one are living below the poverty line, governments are not living up to their commitments to ensure the right to an adequate standard of living.”
The annual Welfare in Canada report examines the total welfare incomes of example households receiving social assistance in a given year, in all 13 provincial and territorial jurisdictions. It is the only publicly available resource of its kind in Canada.
The report calculates the total welfare income a household could receive from all government transfers, including social assistance payments. Tax credits, additional social assistance payments, and child benefits are also included where applicable.
The authors analyzed the total welfare incomes of four example household types in each province and territory: a single adult; a single adult with a disability; a single parent with one child; and a couple with two children. The report looks at 56 households in total; additional households were included to better represent the programs in Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec.
According to the report, all but one of the examined 56 households – or 98 per cent – were living on incomes that were below the official poverty line in 2023. Forty of 56 households – or 71 per cent – were living in deep poverty, which is below 75 per cent of the poverty line.
High inflation in recent years has revealed a gap between jurisdictions that invest in income supports and those that don’t. Some jurisdictions have created new programs, increased existing benefit amounts, indexed benefits, or provided higher earned income exemptions to help people deal with higher costs. In other jurisdictions, total welfare incomes have stagnated, becoming increasingly inadequate and worsening the standard of living for social assistance recipients.
Fewer jurisdictions provided cost-of-living related income supports in 2023. Almost none of the temporary payments of previous years were renewed, negatively impacting the households who had received them.