Let's End Child Poverty!
by S. Cosburn Mortimer,
research director of the Bankers' Alliance for Responsible Freedom
April 4, 2007The problem of child poverty is endemic in Canada. The Canadian government’s own statistics show that one Canadian child in seven lives in poverty. We here at the Bankers’ Alliance for Responsible Freedom agree with the National Anti-Poverty Organization that reduction of poverty has not been and is not now a priority for Canadian governments, and that it is high time that reduction of poverty became a high priority for them.
Consequently, the Alliance struck a task force to investigate ways to alleviate child poverty. This Task Force has now published its report: No Kidding: Perpetuation of Poverty among the Young.
The Task Force found, as so often turns out to be true, that the underlying obstacle to child affluence is easy to understand, but that governments, for whatever reason, seem not to understand it. Simply put, poverty consists in having inadequate income, and children live in poverty because they have no income.
Children are, in fact, largely prohibited by law from having incomes. What income children may obtain comes chiefly from their parents, in the form of allowances. Obviously, the potential for income from this source will vary directly with the wealth of one’s parents, and previous research conducted by the Alliance has shown that poor children overwhelmingly have parents who are living in poverty.
The chief source of income for adults is a job. Children, however, are prevented from having jobs, and consequently from having incomes. While laws against child labour are intended to prevent the exploitation of children, in determining the efficacy of these laws in achieving this goal one must consider their deleterious effect of condemning children to lives of poverty in which their chief function is to serve as sources of income for the social work industry. If, as a result of not being exploited, children are to be required by law to be destitute, one must seriously consider if child labour laws are the best way to protect children’s interests.
The Bankers’ Alliance therefore proposes that in our capitalist economy children be allowed to exploit their natural labour capital. Restrictions against the employment of children should be removed, and protection against exploitation of children in the workplave should be provided by labour laws which protect all Canadians regardless of age (including, of course, those who hire labour).
Reduction in child poverty would be almost immediate. Positions in the workforce as match-girls, bobbin-minders, and between-stairs maids are going begging, so liberalization of the labour laws would immediately increase the incomes of many poor children. The Alliance believes that provision should also be made to encourage children to undertake entrepreneurial ventures, and to this end has established the Child Enterprise Foundation to provide start-up grants to businesses in fields such as retail lemonade provision and itinerant footwear care.
Not only would liberalization of the labour laws reduce child poverty, it would also reduce poverty in general by increasing the disposable income of poor parents. Income which they previously would have spent on their children could be re-directed to general enhancement of family life.
We encourage Canadians to eliminate the barriers to prosperity which continue to infest our society. Do it for the children.
(For more articles by S. Cosburn Mortimer, click here Let's End Child Poverty! © John Fitzgerald, 2007
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