Economic Performance of Off-Reserve Aboriginal Canadians A Study of Groups at Risk of Social Exclusion - January 2002

6. Off-reserve Aboriginal people and their economic situation

According to the 1996 Canadian Census, close to 800,000 individuals, which is less than 3% of the total population, declared themselves as Aboriginal people. Of these, only about 30% were living on reserve.¹⁶ Only 20% of the off-reserve Aboriginal people indicated that they lived in rural areas. Moreover, more than 60% of Aboriginal people were registered under Canada's Indian Act. But this proportion drops considerably when one only looks at off-reserve Aboriginal people. In 1996, registered Aboriginal people only represented 46% of the Aboriginal population living off reserve compared with 98% living on reserve.

These differences in terms of where they lived and their status suggest that Aboriginal people are not all living under the same conditions and that some of them might be more at risk of social exclusion than others. We should first look at how off-reserve Aboriginal people manage from an economic point of view, compared to the other high risk groups.

Figure 2 Rate of Persistent Poverty Between 1993 and 1998, by Group

The above figure clearly indicates that, among high risk groups, the Off-reserve Aboriginal group is the one in which members were least likely to have experienced a period of persistent poverty in the last few years. The proportion who experienced persistent poverty between 1993 and 1998 (18.6%), while greater than those non-high risk (4.8%), is one-half to two-thirds that observed in each of the other high risk groups (varying between 27.6% and 34.5%).

As was briefly indicated in the methodology section, three factors could influence the rate of persistent poverty in each of the groups: the proportion of individuals who experienced poverty during the period under study, the average difference between family income and the low income cutoff and the average amount of time spent in poverty among those who experienced it. Thus, it is interesting to observe which of these factors best explains the fact that the members of the Off-reserve Aboriginal group experienced less persistent poverty between 1993 and 1998 than the other high risk groups.

According to Table 1, the fact that individuals belonging to the Off-reserve Aboriginal group were those who most often managed to avoid persistent poverty is partly due to the fact that they had less opportunity to experience poverty at any time between 1993 and 1998. Also, when they were poor, they were generally so for a shorter period of time than the members of the other high risk groups. The third factor, which is the average difference between family income and the low income cutoff, does not contribute to reducing their risk of persistent poverty since the Off-reserve Aboriginal group is the high risk group, after Recent immigrant, with the highest average difference during this period. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that the largest average difference between family income and the low income cutoff is among the non-high risk poor. This suggests that, even if they are poor more seldom and for not as long as the members of the High risk group, when they are, the members of the Non-high risk group are in a more severe state of poverty than those High risk.

Regardless of which of the three factors is the most important, Off-reserve Aboriginal people have, to a surprising extent, escaped persistent poverty much more often during the last few years than the members of the other high risk groups. Also, this measure gives a less pessimistic portrait, at least in comparison with the other high risk groups, of the long-term economic situation of this particular group of Aboriginal people. However, it also raises questions about what would explain this stronger relative economic performance.

¹⁶ This figure excludes the inhabitants of the 77 reserves who did not take part in the Census, accounting for approximately 44,000 individuals.