Reducing poverty means looking at all its complexities
A June article in Policy Options highlighted a relatively new and important measure of economic hardship for older Canadians – the material deprivation index (MDI). Poverty among older adults is indeed complex and requires multiple indicators to assess it comprehensively.
The two established indicators – the market basket measure (MBM) and the low-income measure (LIM) – define poverty in terms of income while the MDI provides a direct assessment of financial hardship by evaluating a household’s ability to afford essential goods and services.
The National Institute on Ageing collected the MDI data for the first time in its 2024 annual survey on aging in Canada.
