Study: Cutting Through the Fog: Why is it so hard to make sense of poverty measures?

From a Metcalf Foundation announcement:

The Foundation has released a new paper by Metcalf Innovation Fellow, John Stapleton and Richard Shillington of Informetrica Limited called Cutting Through the Fog: Why is it so hard to make sense of poverty measures?

The paper is about the challenges facing citizens when presented with statistics on poverty, and emphasizes the need to question the implications and assumptions underlying various poverty measures. The authors look at how we measure poverty levels, the working poor, child benefits, unemployment and Employment Insurance. They provide some basic information about what measures are used and illustrate how different approaches to the data can colour social realities. As Stapleton and Shillington write, "... if we don't make sense of poverty measures, we will limit our ability as a society to make good decisions about poverty and related issues." We hope this short paper will stimulate thoughtful debate about poverty and its measurement among Canadians.