Xref: utzoo ont.general:1014 can.general:1643 Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!scs!sce!bond From: bond@sce.carleton.ca (Greg Bond) Newsgroups: ont.general,can.general Subject: Re: The Taxman Cometh for NSERC Award Recipients Message-ID: <655@sce.carleton.ca> Date: 28 Aug 89 14:17:37 GMT References: <1089@jtsv16.UUCP> Distribution: can Organization: Systems & Computer Eng. Dept., Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 38 brian@jtsv16.UUCP (Brian A. Jarvis) writes: >From 'way back in high school, the poverty line was defined to be spending >about 2/3 of your income on necessities: housing, clothing, food. I've been doing some research for the teaching assistants' union here in Ottawa which has uncovered the following stats: o Canadian families spend an average of 38.5% of their income on food, clothing and shelter o the National Council on Welfare has deemed the low income cut-off (the poverty line) when 58.5% of income goes to necessities - this percentage is based on gross income which includes scholarships and excludes loans o for areas with populations of over 500 000 the low income line for an individual in 1989 is $12 037 (this figure is based on a projected inflation of 4% for 1989 based on consumer price index figures) This information is contained in the document "1989 Poverty Lines - Estimates by the National Council on Welfare," Ministry of Supply and Services Canada, April 1989. The preamble in this document stresses that this is the most conservative of the poverty line figures calculated by other agencies (i.e. the highest figure). However, I was surprised to see that the figures were not calculated by geographic region since one would think the poverty line in Metro Toronto would be higher than in, say, Calgary. An NSERC postgraduate scholarship is either $12 500 or $13 500 (effective September 1988), so even without a TA or RA from your school an NSERC recipient would be above the poverty line - with the additional funding one would be comfortably above the poverty line. ----------------------------------------------------------- Greg Bond - Dept. of Systems and Computer Engineering Carleton University, Ottawa - bond@sce.carleton.ca