There’s an interesting read (pdf) on how to understand poverty levels in Canada by John Stapleton and Richard Shillington. The report is released by the Metcalf Foundation, which says of the report:

The paper is about the challenges facing citizens when presented with statistics on poverty, and emphasizes the need to question the implications and assumptions underlying various poverty measures. The authors look at how we measure poverty levels, the working poor, child benefits, unemployment and Employment Insurance.  They provide some basic information about what measures are used and illustrate how different approaches to the data can colour social realities.   As Stapleton and Shillington write, “… if we don’t make sense of poverty measures, we will limit our ability as a society to make good decisions about poverty and related issues.”   We hope this short paper will stimulate thoughtful debate about poverty and its measurement among Canadians. read more

Download a PDF of the report.