The Family and Child Poverty in Hamilton report is the first Hamilton report to use the Campaign 2000 framework to examine family and child poverty in our community. Using taxfiler data, this new report explores family and child poverty, finding that Hamilton’s child poverty rate of 21.1% in 2023 is higher than both the Canadian(18.3%) and Ontario (19.9%) rates. That means that one in five children in Hamilton are living in poverty. This is over 24,000 children in Hamilton, which would fill the TD Coliseum (18,000 capacity) and Ron Joyce Stadium at McMaster University (6,000 capacity).
Other key findings include:
- Nearly half of children in lone-parent families live in poverty (48.7%), roughly four times the rate for children in couple families.
- The average depth of poverty for families reached about $14,039 in 2023, indicating worsening income adequacy even when poverty rates are measured consistently.
- Lone-parent families with two children had the largest poverty gap, with a median after-tax family income that was $14,929 below the poverty line for a family of three.
Some of what was driving the increase in poverty rates include:
- Temporary pandemic-era income supports reduced poverty in 2020, but the end of major top-ups coincided with sharp increases in child poverty in 2021 and 2022 and continued high levels in 2023.
- Housing and food cost pressures are intensifying. Hamilton rents have risen much faster than inflation since 2010, and local indicators show food insecurity and food bank use increasing.
As Campaign 2000 indicated in its 2025 report, government transfers are a foundational component of Canada’s poverty‑reduction architecture. They play a critical role in reducing income insecurity, rapidly lowering poverty rates, and narrowing inequality by raising the minimum income floor. Yet, Canada’s current income security system remains inadequate.