Economic security in Nova Scotia

Since income in old age is the result of a lifelong series of events and decisions, the risk of ―insecurity in old age‖ is modelled in a simplified way in the IEWB, namely as the chance that an elderly person will be poor multiplied by the average depth of that poverty (again the percentage difference between the actual income of low-income seniors and the LIM). [...] Using the MBM, a smaller share of the low income population is found in the largest urban centres while a larger share lives in rural areas.‖ In the Nova Scotia context, it is particularly important that the Market Basket Method estimates the cost of living for poor people as 3 per cent higher in rural areas of Nova Scotia than in cities the size of Halifax. [...] For elderly poverty, the proportion of the population in immediate risk of poverty in old age, defined as the proportion of the 45-64 population in the total population (for example, 29.3 per cent in Nova Scotia in 2007). [...] For example, the index of security from the risk of unemployment in Nova Scotia fell during the recession of the early 1980s, improved in the late 1980s, then fell sharply in the 1990s recession, reaching an all-time low in 1993, not recovering to 1981 levels till 1999, and reaching its highest level in 2006 (see Table 1 in Appendix 2). [...] The changing ratio of the index of economic security in Nova Scotia to that in Canada provides a much clearer picture of Nova Scotia‘s performance in economic security compared to the rest of the country (Figure 2).