FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
NEWS
by FFWD StaffPolice personnel and expenditures in Canada
There were 54,699 police officers in Canada in 1997, an increase of less than one per cent from 1996. Despite this small advance, the police per population ratio declined for the sixth straight year to 181 police officers per 100,000 population, similar to the ratio of 25 years ago. Since 1991, police strength, as measured by the number of police per population, has declined by 11 per cent.
Manitoba had the most police officers per 100,000 population (195) in 1997, followed by Quebec (185). Newfoundland (141) and Prince Edward Island (149) reported the lowest rates. While the number of police per 100,000 population has been declining in most jurisdictions in recent years, it has increased by four per cent in British Columbia over the last two years.
Thunder Bay had the most police per 100,000 population among the census metropolitan areas, followed by Winnipeg. Chicoutimi-Jonquiére and Kitchener-Waterloo had the fewest.
Compared to other census metropolitan areas, Calgary ranked 17th with 1,207 police officers for a population of 885,130, or 136.4 police per 100,000.
Policing expenditures in Canada for 1996 totalled $5.86 billion, a cost of $195 per person. Policing expenditures went up less than one per cent in 1996; however, after adjusting for inflation, expenditures dropped (-0.7 per cent) for the fourth consecutive year.
Financial gap between families in Canada increasing
The gap between low income and high income families continues to grow in Canada, with single parent families and the elderly being the most likely to be below the low income cutoffs.
Average family income in 1996 was an estimated $56,629, up one per cent from 1995, after adjusting for inflation. This left 1996 average family income some $2,300, or 3.9 per cent, below the peak recorded in 1989, but about $1,500 above the level recorded in 1993 following the recession of the early 1990s.
The proportion of Canadians below Statistics Canada's low income cut-offs was virtually unchanged at 17.9 per cent of the population. This was an estimated 5,294,000 people, compared with 5,205,000 in 1995.
An estimated 1,498,000 children under the age of 18 lived in low-income families in 1996. This represented 21.1 per cent of all children, which is consistent with 1995. Children in female lone-parent families were five times as likely to be in a low-income situation as those in two-parent families.
The statistics also indicate that although average family income was little changed overall, results varied considerably depending on where families were situated along the income spectrum - lower income families experienced decreases while upper income families had increases.
For the 20 per cent of families with the lowest incomes (the lowest "quintile") average family income declined three per cent, the result of both lower earnings and lower transfer payments. This group depends heavily on transfers (59 per cent of their income). Female lone-parent families account for one in four families in this group.
At the top of the income distribution, improvements in earnings resulted in real income gains of 1.4 per cent for the fourth quintile and 1.8 per cent for the highest quintile of families.
The result of these income shifts is that income inequality grew in 1996 as it has during most of the 1990s, whether calculated on income before transfers or on total income. During this period, after-tax income inequality has remained stable. Whether or not this stability continued in 1996 will not be determined until estimates of family income after-tax are compiled in the spring of 1998.
Generally, changes in family income can be attributed to labor market conditions, as almost 80 per cent of total family income comes from employment. The Labour Force Survey indicates that employment grew by 1.3 per cent in 1996, contrasting with the more robust growth of 2.1 per cent in 1994, the last year of significant improvement in family income.
As well, only one-half of the employment growth in 1996 was full time. The trend to self-employment may also have been a factor, since the self-employed tend to earn less, on average, than paid workers.
Children in female lone-parent families have a higher probability of living in a low income situation. In 1996, they were five times more likely to be in a low income family than children in two-parent families (60.8 per cent of female lone-parent families had low incomes compared with 11.8 per cent for two-parent families).
In 1996, an estimated 722,000 elderly persons had low incomes. This represented 20.8 per cent of the elderly population, up from the record low of 18.7 per cent in 1995. A large percentage of the elderly have incomes near the low income cut-offs. Consequently, rates for seniors are particularly sensitive to small income shifts. Since the early 1980s, the rate for seniors has been trending downward. While the elderly population grew by 59 per cent between 1980 and 1996, the number of low income seniors decreased by three per cent during the same period.
(Estimates of the number of families and persons with low income are derived using Statistics Canada's low income cut-offs (LICOs), 1992 base. These cut-offs were selected on the basis that families with incomes below these limits usually spend more than 54.7 per cent of their income on food, shelter and clothing, so are considered to live in straitened circumstances. Statistics Canada has emphasized, since their publication began over 25 years ago, that the LICOs are quite different from measures of poverty and that the agency does not endorse their use as such.)
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