A fine line: Finding the right seniors’ poverty measure in Canada

• The basket of goods and services is not designed for seniors: The MBM basket is tailored to the needs of a “traditional” family of four, which are quite different than the needs of seniors. [...] Initially, the goal of the MBM was to complement existing measures of low income to evaluate the effectiveness of the National Child Benefit initiative, which aimed to reduce the incidence and depth of child poverty in Canada.14 Statistics Canada established a reference family consisting of two adults and two children to understand child poverty, with thresholds for all other families and unattach. [...] pub/75f0002m/2012002/lim-mfr-eng.htm#n1 22 The LIM thresholds are derived in multiple steps: (1) Calculate the adjusted household income for each household by dividing the household income by the equivalence scale, which is the square root of the number of persons in the household. [...] The three most important are: the problem with “equivalizing,” the omission of health costs from the MBM, and the composition of the basket of goods and services. [...] For example, the cost of the shelter component of the MBM for the reference family of four is based on the median cost of three-bedroom rental units occupied by households in the second income decile.31 The equivalent for the unattached single would be the median cost of a one-bedroom rental unit.