Follow up to the poverty line post

[danaeris]

Minimum wage in Ontario is $8/hour. 40 hours per week, 52 weeks a year, that amounts to 16640, which is WAY less than the poverty line for the province. Add onto that the fact that some of those folks are going to miss some hours, and that many of them live in Toronto where things are more expensive, yet the poverty line is defined for Canada in general, and I'm figuring that an increase of the minimum wage to $10/hour in Toronto would be a very very good idea. That would put the perfect min. wage worker drone at 20.8K, which is just under the poverty line, which I guess is about right.

However, the problem I see with that is that they say that you should spend no more than 30% of your income on housing. That means this min wage worker drone would be spending $520/month on housing. That can be done if you do shared housing, but living on your own it just isn't possible. And this person certainly couldn't support a spouse and children. If both parents worked minimum wage, I think they could squeak by just barely... that woud be just over a thousand for rent each month, and there are a few two bedrooms out there for that much. The kids would have to share the second bedroom, but it would just barely work.

Comments

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Actually, the poverty line in terms of actual amounts changes from city to city based on the population of the city and the relative expense of housing. I know this because Hamilton just crossed the half-million line, so our poverty line has gone up. Before, it was an income of 33k some-odd for a family of four; now, it's an income of 39K some-odd. The theory is that the bigger the city, the higher the cost of living, and the more money it takes to maintain a lifestyle above the poverty level.

There's been a lot in the paper this week about what this will mean for Hamilton. Of the top ten cities in the country population-wise, Hamilton is the poorest. WE already knew that from the old stats; the new ones are likely to make the situation even more stark.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Also, while I support a rise in minimum wages, to every economic action their is someone who benefits and someone who loses out, and such things need to be taken into account. How many of those min-wage earners are getting overtime now, who would see it cut if the minimum went up - expected to work harder in less time, but without enough extra money to make up for the loss of the overtime? How many would simply see their jobs or their hours cut? And the best argument of all - if the minimum wage goes up, it actually fuels inflation because the companies that pay minimum wage aren't likely to simply take a hit on the bottom line - they're going to raise prices. That (fairly meagre) increase gets eaten up very quickly if you take all of these points together, and the last one affects everyone, though it affects the working poor disproportionately more.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Exactly. While I'm all for eliminating poverty, I think the statement "If you make minimum wage, you are poor" isn't outrageous.

How is the minimum wage calculated? In the US, there is a federal minimum wage and each state has one as well (state can't be lower than federal). But it's calculated based on the amount of food a family of 4 eats in a year, multiplied by a constnat. Back when the minimum wage was set up, the cost of food was the the limiting factor -- now it's definitely the cost of housing but the multiplier hasn't changed, nor has the base factor.

So in the States, there's an imbalance created, because the poverty line is actually way too low ( http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq1.htm#hhs ) -- can you imagine, making $12k ($1k per month) as a single person in the US and *not* be under the poverty line?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's calculated based on a sliding scale related to what percentage of income is typically spent on housing and food, and it changes according to family size. So, the poverty line for a single person in a large city is a slightly larger amount than the poverty line for that same single person in a smaller city, and they're both a lot smaller than the poverty line for a family of four. (For a family of four in a small city, 100-499K, the poverty line is 33k, which makes sense to me; for a city over 500k, the poverty line jumps to 39k.)

It's not a perfect scale, because it's very dependent on the cost of housing and on people's housing choices, which aren't always as economical as they could be. But it's certainly much better than 12K being considered not poor.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I don't think that the expectation of shared housing for those "in poverty" is at all unreasonable. It's essentially unchanged from as far back as modern housing exists. Pretty much anyone working at a job instead of a profession DID share apartments, in lousy parts of town.