Activities

To illustrate the impacts of poverty and income inequality on the day-to-day decision making that takes place in many Canadian homes, we include here several interlocking activities: The Budget Exercise; 24/7 Schedule; Grocery Shopping on a Budget; and Back to School Shopping. The main exercise is called The Budget Activity. This activity, which is an evolving document that changes as people interact with it, and as wages and costs of living change, first began as a very simple exercise about twenty years ago, in response to a question in one of Dr. Leighteizer’s classes. There are no “right answers” in interacting with the Budget Exercise; its primary intent is to spend some time engaging with the financial realities of a family who are part of the demographic commonly referred to as the working poor. The family you will encounter in this Budget Exercise has two adults, both of them fully employed, at minimum wage jobs. They have two children, one school age and one not. Even the several years’ age gap between the two children is a common occurrence for families in this income bracket: they often need to defer having a second child until the first child no longer needs day care, which is usually paid for by parents, and is often quite expensive, particularly for fully-employed parents who may not be eligible for a highly coveted subsidized day care position.