These laws and programs are based on the idea that everyone has a right to a basic standard of living. Article 25 of the United Nations "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" says:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

When the standard of living falls below this basic level, the same problems that caused children to die in the past will return again.

What About Today?
We might think that we will never need to worry about the problems that people faced in the past. But is this true? In most of Canada now, social assistance does not keep people above the poverty line. In fact, in Newfoundland, social assistance only provides a single, employable person with 33% of the money needed to reach the poverty line.²²

Recently, the number of people in the United States who have tuberculosis has grown for the first time in many years. Most of these people are homeless. They live like people used to in the past. They do not have running water or proper sewage. They do not get enough good food to stay healthy. Whenever people live below a basic standard of living, the same old problems return.

In Canada now, few children die before their first birthdays. But children in lowest income families are still twice as likely to die before the age of one as children in the families with the highest incomes.²³ More than 25% of all homeless people in Canada are now children.²⁴ What do all these things tell us about the standard of living in our country?