New Brunswick’s 2022 Child Poverty Report Card shows 1 in 6 children in the province were living in poverty.
The data, which is from 2020, shows 16.6 percent of children or about 23,000 were living in poverty in New Brunswick.
A five percent drop over the previous year and the largest reduction in recent years, the Human Development Council said the driving force was COVID-19 government income support programs.
Had it not been for these benefits, the report states the provincial child poverty rate would have increased from 2019 to 2020.
New Brunswick had the fifth-highest provincial child poverty rate in Canada.
Rates were highest in the cities of Campbellton, Bathurst and Saint John (above 20 percent) while the lowest was in Dieppe (9.5 percent).
There were also large differences in child poverty rates found in the two largest cities and their suburban areas.
The rate in Moncton was more than twice as high as Dieppe and the rate in Saint John was more than three times higher than Quispamsis.
Some groups were overrepresented like children under age 6, children in one-parent families, along with racialized and Indigenous children.
With pandemic supports now reduced or gone, the Human Development Council fears a return to pre-pandemic poverty levels unless further action is taken.
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