Last week, the 2019 BC Child Poverty Report Card: Summary Report was released. It provides a snapshot of  child and family poverty in the province. Despite a federal, all-party resolution in 1989 to end child poverty by the year 2000, child poverty persists.

Some of the report card’s preliminary findings include:

• In 2017, 19.1% of children in BC lived in poverty, representing 163,730 children.
• Overall, BC had the 8^th highest child poverty rate of all the provinces and territories, slightly higher than the Canadian average.
• Over half of the children living in poverty (53%) are living in lone-parent families.
• The child poverty rates across BC’s regional districts varied from 15.3% in the East Kootenay Regional District to 42.5% in the Central Coast Regional District.

Accompanying the report are Regional Factsheets that focus on statistics in regions and indicate the disparities between areas within BC.

The current report is a preliminary summary. First Call has a list of 9 preliminary recommendations accompanying this summary. Full data will be released in the spring at still1in5.ca/.

Over the next three years, First Call will scale up our research to offer leaders and communities more resources for advocacy. This includes offering more data on smaller geographic areas, identifying local system opportunities and empowering leaders with tools and training that advance policy and practices that will reduce child and family poverty. 

2020: Setting the Stage for a Poverty-Free Canada, the national child and family poverty report card, was released at the same time. A larger report, it covers child poverty in Canada as a whole and describes a number of recommendations for eradicating child and family poverty.