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House of Commons committee on poverty released a report proposing a guaranteed basic income for Canadians with disabilities, on the model already available to seniors. The Senate released a similar report this spring calling for a study of how it would work for all low-income Canadians.

Within a year, working with counsellors who helped them with their plans and purchases, nine of the 15 participants were moving to some form of housing. The results were not perfect: A couple of people moved back out of housing again, and at least one was imprisoned. But most spent far less than the money available to them, mostly on clothing, food and rent. On the other hand, one person who chose to remain on the street asked for music lessons, and that was all right too.

Economists continue to bounce the idea around. Two years ago, Canadian researchers started their own chapter of the Basic Income Earth Network (a group founded in Belgium in 1986) to co-ordinate an ongoing discussion. Some say it might actually accomplish what political rhetoric has been promising for years: the eradication of poverty.

In Britain, an experiment was recently conducted with a small group of people who had been living on the streets for more than five years. They were given a budget that they could spend however they wished. The idea was to see whether the “personalized budgets” Britain gives to seniors and people with disabilities to pay for care (which include some conditions) would work for the very poor as well.

In Quebec, a government task force went further, recommending a minimum guaranteed income starting at $12,000 for everyone in the province.

The idea of a guaranteed annual income has been tested before in Canada – in the mid-1970s, in Dauphin, Man., a farming town with then about 10,000 residents. In the only experiment of its kind in North America, every household in Dauphin was given access to a guaranteed annual budget, subject to their income level. For a family of five, payments equalled about $18,000 a year in today's dollars. Politicians primarily wanted to see if people would stop working. While the project was pre-empted by a change in government, a second look by researchers has found that there was only a slight decline in work – mostly among mothers, who chose to stay home with their children, and teenaged boys, who stayed in school longer.

“Very often, services are about getting people off the streets, come what may,” says Joe Batty, who managed the program. “This is about normalizing people.” The program was considered so successful, he says, that the city of London is now providing financial support to expand it.

Evelyn Forget, a researcher in medicine at the University of Manitoba, reports that Dauphin also experienced a 10-per-cent drop in hospital admissions and fewer doctor visits, especially for mental-health issues.

But a guaranteed-annual-income program would be expensive. In developing nations, a small amount of money can bring about big changes. In a country like Canada, the basic income needed to pull everyone out of poverty would have to be larger, balanced against higher taxes.

cost analysis of the Quebec proposal estimated it could run the province as much as $2-billion, including the cost in lost taxes if minimum-wage workers did the math and left those jobs.

Other experts argue that poverty reduction needs to be tailored to individual circumstances, especially in cases involving mental health and addiction.

Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, one of the more vocal proponents of no-strings-attached aid for the poor, points out that the guaranteed-income program for seniors has greatly reduced poverty, especially among women. “There's a bias that when given the chance people will be lazy,” he says. “That's not my sense of reality.” Mr. Segal argues that giving money with no conditions removes the stigma and shame around poverty, allowing people to focus instead on how to improve their lot.

Requiring the poor to prove continually that they are deserving of assistance or threatening to pull help away without notice only discourages the risk-taking and confidence required to get out of poverty.

“If you think of the core premise of charity, it is not to treat people as lesser,” Mr. Segal says. “[It] is to give people a leg-up so they can have some measure of independence and can make some of their own choices.”

To do that effectively, he argues, we need to let them decide the steps they take to get there. Or – as Ms. Gray in Victoria puts it, saying she would go back to school for more training if she could count on covering rent and daycare – give some autonomy back to “people who are trying to be somebody in this world.”

Changes in capital income — which primarily affects wealthier people — have contributed to rising inequality, although the impact has been relatively modest when compared to changes in labor income

Today, across developed countries, the average income of the richest 10 percent of the population is about nine times that of the poorest 10 percent, with much bigger multiples in Israel, Turkey, the United States, Chile and Mexico. In these last two countries, the income ratio is 27 to 1.

Besides outright layoffs, there have also been cuts in work hours (sometimes voluntary, sometimes not), disproportionately affecting lower-paid employees:

Globalization has had an impact, as rich countries have been sending more of their commodifiable, generally less-skilled jobs offshore, which has displaced many lower-paid workers in rich countries.

Technological improvements have also disproportionately benefited the pay of high-skilled workers. Regulatory changes, like loosening protections for temporary (and less-skilled) workers and lower unemployment benefits, may have also had an effect.

Over the years people have become more and more likely to marry mates who have similar incomes. “Today, 40 percent of couples in which both partners work belong to the same or neighboring earnings deciles, compared with 33 percent some 20 years ago,” the report says.

Surely to some extent this has to do with more women having earnings, period, and therefore having more women’s earning matching what their husbands make. But in any case if poor marry poor and rich marry rich, that magnifies the income gap effect. After all, if poor married rich, the result would be more evenly distributed wealth.

most likely to benefit from registered education savings plans

$400 a year

tuition fees as tax deductions

denies universities the tuition money that they need

economists say the benefits to the rich from these tax breaks will far outweigh anything seen by other members of society.

single parents, who account for one in five families with young children and have the highest rate of poverty in this country.

“The families that will most benefit from Harper’s income-splitting promise will be those who need the least help,” says Armine Yalnizyan, an economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “The higher the income, the bigger the tax break.”

Putting in place restrictions on executive bonuses, taxing financial transactions and corporate profits does little to mitigate the flawed incentives that have led to exuberant financial booms. A genuine solution would consist of eliminating bailout guarantees to the banking sector, thus reducing the existing incentives for gambling with other people’s money.

the rise of cheap imports from countries such as China and new forms of large-scale retailing, epitomized by Wal-Mart and Sears, which have given the low-income groups access to goods that previously were enjoyed only by the rich. In terms of the actual material conditions of living, developed countries appear to be more equal than ever before.

growth of executive remuneration in the financial industry cannot be dissociated from a cozy relationship that has long existed between policymakers and bankers

Meantime, resist. Resist the urge to buy. Instead, give – ethically and year-round, not just now. Finally, decry gross inequality and elected officials who ignore it.

deregulation, free trade, fiscal conservatism (yes, that would be neo-liberal conservatism) -are rewriting the post-war economic and social contract at the expense of the poor and to the benefit of the rich.

globalization may be playing a part.

Technology also plays a role

Changes in household size do seem to be part of the problem. In most countries, there are fewer people per household. Across the OECD, the number of households with only one head has risen from 15% to 20% of the total.

If more families are smaller and therefore not enjoying such economies of scale, more are going to be poorer.

Whether these shifts were good or bad depends on your political persuasion. Those on the left lament the gaps, often forgetting that the greater income disparities have created bigger incentives to get an education, which has led to a better trained, more productive workforce. The share of American workers with a college degree, 20% in 1980, is over 30% today.

the focus should be on giving everyone a an equal chance to be successful. This might mean making the tax code less regressive by expanding the earned income tax credit, eliminating tax subsidies to the rich, and improving access to quality education.