Report quantifies poverty’s devastating effect on Manitoba’s economy overall

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This article was published 01/04/2024 (527 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Poverty’s effects don’t stop at the people in need; the costs affect all Manitobans whose taxes help to pay for the health and justice systems.

A Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report reveals that in 2019 — the most recent year for which statistics are available — poverty cost the province $2.5 billion.

Molly McCracken, director of CCPA-Manitoba and one of the authors of the report, said the figure translates to 3.4 per cent of the Manitoba’s GDP, and $1,952 per Manitoban.

“It is quite a drain on the public purse and our economy,” she said Monday.

“There’s human suffering and loss of dignity. This is one approach which shows poverty is expensive, but, if we invest in it, we can save.”

McCracken said the independent research institute’s report was released one day before Manitoba’s NDP government delivers its first budget.

“We wanted to get it out connected to the budget,” she said.

The fact it was April Fools’ Day was, however, an unfortunate coincidence.

“It’s not a joke,” she said. “It’s the sad reality.”

Manitoba has had some of the country’s highest poverty rates for years. More than one in every five children, or 20.68 per cent, lived in poverty in Manitoba in 2020, the worst rate in Canada.

In northern Manitoba in 2021, the child-poverty rate was 39 per cent and, in Winnipeg’s inner city, it was 30 per cent.

About 20 per cent of Manitoba’s First Nations residents live in poverty, while the average rate among racialized groups is 12 per cent, about four per cent higher than non-racialized groups.

Kate Kehler, the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg’s executive director, said the report makes clear what poverty costs overall.

“We pay for it in the justice system, in health and even in education, she said. “People in poverty can’t get the most out of education.”

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The near-century-old non-profit organization’s leader said most programs to help people are for the “here and now,” but government has to also look towards programs that take more time and effort but produce longer-term results.

“It’s not true everyone can pull themselves out of poverty,” she said.

People living in poverty are at a higher risk of becoming ill, being diagnosed with cancer or diabetes and being hospitalized, McCracken said. Life-expectancy is nine per cent lower for people living in the lowest-income areas compared to the highest.

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“Poverty costs the health system $347 million per year,” Andrew Lodge, Klinic Community Health’s medical director of health, said in a statement.

“The province should invest in preventing poverty to improve low-income people’s overall well-being and reduce the commensurate health costs.”

Meanwhile, Manitoba has the second-highest incarceration rate in the country at 153 people per 100,000, compared to 67 per 100,000 nationally.

According to the CCPA report, poverty carries a $1.6-billion “lost-opportunity cost” in the province that factors in lower future earnings and taxes that would be paid, based on studies that show 30 per cent of children who grow up in poverty remain in poverty as adults.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

Kevin Rollason
Reporter

Kevin Rollason is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He graduated from Western University with a Masters of Journalism in 1985 and worked at the Winnipeg Sun until 1988, when he joined the Free Press. He has served as the Free Press’s city hall and law courts reporter and has won several awards, including a National Newspaper Award. Read more about Kevin.

Every piece of reporting Kevin produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.