Thank you to the committee.
As was said, my name is Katherine Scott, and I am a senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives here in Ottawa. I am also the proud mother of Charlotte, who was thrilled to attend the committee on Tuesday, as part of the delegation with Daughters of the Vote.
I can't promise to match the eloquence and passion of the young woman who spoke to you on Tuesday, but I am looking forward to talking about the economic challenges facing older women in Canada today.
Poverty and economic insecurity are unique hardships for older women, particularly when combined with the many overlapping challenges of aging, such as chronic illness, loss of mobility, providing care for a spouse, grandchildren, or both, or loss of community support. Given that Canada's population is aging, the gaps in our system of public supports for seniors will directly affect ever-widening numbers of people.
Today, I would argue, seniors are sometimes portrayed as a well-off generation that benefits overly much from generous government supports, at the expense of younger Canadians. This narrative ignores, I would argue, the realities of large inequalities in income and wealth in Canada, particularly among seniors, many of whom remain in poverty, despite the positive impact of CPP and OAS/GIS. It also ignores the very large reality of large disparities between men and women.
Age and gender are only two of the many intersecting factors, such as race, conjugal status, employment and sexual identity that impact economic security. It's the intersection of these experiences and identities that reveal the challenges women face, and what's needed by way of solutions.
In my short presentation, I'm going to point out what we know, and give you some thoughts about what we think is needed by way of building out supports for this important group.
Here's what we know. Seniors' poverty has increased since the mid-1990s, reaching 15.4% in 2017. That's according to the Canadian Income Survey. Rates of poverty are higher among senior women than among senior men. In Canada, in 2017, almost 600,000 older women lived in poverty, as compared to 340,000 men. Rates of poverty, again, among women, are higher in marginalized communities.
The census gives us great information about this. We know, for example, that one quarter of older indigenous women—those over age 65—live in poverty. The figure among women over age 65 who have just immigrated to Canada is 23%. Women in these communities face greater risks. We know, as well, that women who live alone are at particular risk. They are four times more likely to be poor than women living with a spouse or other relatives. Indeed, senior women make up over two-thirds of all seniors living in poverty. They make up over 70% of all singles living in poverty.
There's another large group we need to pay attention to. These are women, and seniors generally, who live with incomes just above the poverty line. More than half—that's 57%—of all older women had after-tax incomes of less than $25,000 a year in 2017, as compared to 38% of men. Of this group, two-thirds of women had incomes between $15,000 and $25,000 a year. We're talking about the majority of senior women in Canada living on very modest incomes. These are not the groups hightailing it down to Florida and the like. We're talking about people living on very modest incomes that are perhaps just above, but certainly not much higher than, the poverty line.
What this tells us is that many have little income above and beyond what's available through basic pensions. They have the basic OAS/GIS, and a modest CPP, depending on their work history. It also tells us why, for instance, core housing need is so acutely high among older women; in particular, women living on their own. It tells us why many face untenable choices each day of paying for the high cost of housing, medication, food or other basics.
It's perhaps not surprising that we've seen an uptick in employment among seniors. One in 10 women over age 65, in 2018, according to the Labour Force Survey, was engaged in the paid labour market. That's up from 3.2% in the year 2000. That's quite significant. We've also seen quite a startling increase in the employment rates of women aged 55 to 64. Indeed, employment was up 18 percentage points among women aged 55 to 59, between 2000 and 2018. It's up 22 percentage points among women aged 60-64, so it's quite a significant increase of labour market for this particular group.
I would argue that it won't be enough. Increased rates of employment certainly won't be enough to offset inadequate pension coverage, and won't be enough to offset woefully low levels of retirement savings.
The difference between income at retirement among those who have a pension and those who do not is stark. Thirty per cent, for instance, of Canadians between the age of 50 and 64 have no RRSPs or other similar assets, and 18% have no savings or private pensions at all. Women, in particular, struggle on incomes that are considerably low for potentially very long periods of time.
Women are doubly disadvantaged in this regard, first because of their work histories and secondly because of the sizable and persistent and damaging gender pay gap.
Women are still more likely to take time out of paid work to care for young children, ill or disabled family members or elderly parents, and they are more likely to work fewer hours at lower wages for the same reason.
Recent research—and you'll have seen any number of studies in the papers of late talking about it—looks at the motherhood wage penalty, and it paints a grim picture. Women's earnings fall steeply after having a child, and they never fully recover. And this, of course, influences their pension coverage and benefit levels much further, through their entire life, down the road.
What would it take then to enhance the economic security of older women? Promoting labour market participation has certainly garnered some attention at the OECD and the like. There was actually a federal-provincial-territorial committee not too long ago that was looking at this.
Let's cut to the three...and then we can come back to it in discussions.
I would argue that's a quixotic. I don't think that trying to increase labour market participation will necessarily deliver the bang, given the scale of the need. What really we need is a strong public infrastructure of public supports such as affordable housing and pharmacare, as well as strategies to address the working conditions in the low wage labour market and the like in order to achieve a foundation to provide greater security.
I will stop there. We can talk about the other things later.