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Sudbury's Vital Signs Report 2007

Gap Between Rich and Poor

Indicators show a decrease in poverty in Greater Sudbury. However, there is little to cheer about when 14,250 families in our community still struggle to get by.

• In 2005, 14,250 families lived below the poverty level* down from14,790 families in 2000. This represents a 7.1% decrease in poverty in Greater Sudbury from 2000 to 2005 compared to a 2.8% decrease for Ontario and a 1.9% decrease for Canada. 12
  * LIM (Low Income Measure) is an indicator of relative poverty used by Statistics Canada.
• In Sudbury the child poverty rate, based on the Low Income Measure (LIM), decreased by almost 3% from 25.1% in 2000 to 22.3% in 2005. 12
• In 2001 only 72.3% of Sudburians' income came from employment compared to 78.7% for Ontario and 77.1% for Canada. 27.2% came from social assistance payments, retirement pensions, investments, annuities, etc. 27
• In 2006 the average number of persons receiving monthly social assistance was 8,351. This is down from 9,006 in 2005. (See Table 3) 28

Table 3. Number of people receiving social assistance in Sudbury

	Ontario Works	ODSP	Total
2005	4,180	4,826	9,006
2006	3,446	4,905	8,351

Source: Social Planning Council of Sudbury, 2006

• 13,454 Sudburians visited local food-banks in March 2006, up from 13,000 in 2005 and 11,000 in 2004. This represents 8.3% of the population. In contrast the Ontario monthly average food bank usage in 2006 was 2.6%. (See Figure 5). 29

Figure 5. 2006 Average monthly food-bank usage

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