Calculation of Cost Savings in Healthcare Due to Poverty Reduction

Canadians with low-income experience poorer health outcomes than average Canadians (1).
Building on a model from Feed Ontario (2019), we can assess the health system costs of poverty by looking at total public health expenditures by income quintile in Canada (Table 1).
- The total cost of healthcare spending for Canada comes from the National Health Expenditure Trends report for the period of 1975 to 2019. The total amount is then distributed across income quintiles to assess the total share of expenditures by income group (2).
- Using Feed Ontario's approach, we can assess the difference in expenditure between the Bottom 20% and the Second Quintile to get the estimated amount of healthcare expenditures that are associated most directly with low income.
- The result is an estimated cost of $17.7 billion that is associated with the lowest income population in Canada.
Table 1: Share of public health expenditures in Canada by income quintile

Calculation of Cost Savings to Criminal Justice System Due to Poverty Reduction

Research has shown that approximately 4% of crime in Canada can be attributed to poverty and low income (3).
The [Federal Department of Justice](Zhang, T. (2011). Cost of Crime in Canada, 2008. Department of Justice. Canada.) has estimated the combined costs of crime in Canada to be $99.6 billion annually
If we apply the 4% rate of crime that is directly linked to low income, we get an estimated cost of crime of $3.9 billion that is associated with low income annually.