Children advocacy group First Call released their annual report card on child poverty in B.C. this week. The report details some startling findings, including:
- One out of every five B.C. children live in poverty.
- Children living in lone-parent families, the vast majority of them single mother families, had a shocking 50 per cent poverty rate in 2012, and were living on average $10,000 below the poverty line.
- The poverty rate for BC children living in two-parent families was 13 per cent and these families were on average more than $10,000 below the poverty line.
- In B.C., 24 out of 29 regional districts had at least 1,000 children living in poverty. The highest rate was found in the Central Coast Regional District, with a 55 per cent child poverty rate.
- Eighty percent of all Metro Vancouver census tracts had at least 100 poor children living in them, and most municipalities had multiple numbers of census tracts with child poverty rates of 20 per cent or higher.
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