EXCERPTS:
Canadian parents are raising children with far less money and time than their baby boomer predecessors, despite the doubling of the Canadian economy since 1976, says a report from the University of British Columbia.
At the same time, Canadians approaching retirement are wealthier than ever before, setting up an intergenerational tension that threatens young families, according to the study, released Tuesday.
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Average household income has flatlined since the mid-1970s, the report noted, while housing prices have increased 76 per cent across the country, leaving parents of young children facing a higher cost of living. That same phenomenon has boosted the wealth of retiring boomers. Numbers are adjusted for inflation.
In Ontario, housing prices jumped eight times faster than household incomes for young couples, even though women have increased their participation in the labour force by almost 40 per cent since 1976.
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Kershaw said in an interview that since the '70s, social policy has not kept up with the realities faced by young families and called on parents of young kids to get politically active.
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Kershaw and his colleagues are calling for a $22 billion "New Deal" for Canadian families to support young children and restore the standard of living for the next generation.
They propose three policy changes: parental benefits, including for self-employed moms and dads that would allow one parent to stay at home for the first 18 months of a child's life, up from the current 12 months; $10-a-day child care; and mandatory flextime for employees and employers.
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The UBC study paints an important picture of how life has improved for seniors and become tougher for young families, says Martha Friendly of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit in Toronto.
"What we've been doing is socializing the costs of being old and privatizing the costs of being young," she said.
Kershaw noted during the economic downturn between 2007 and 2010 Canada invested $22 billion in health care because it was deemed a priority.
"The question this study poses is, is the generation raising kids a priority?"
-reprinted from the Toronto Star