The importance of the relationship between income variables and home environment on children's outcomes cannot be denied. Some of these variables composing the home environment include literacy, children's activities and parental participation in their children's lives. Social policies designed to facilitate the development and occurrence of these activities, could promote child well–being. It is not only important to have policies to promote literacy, but also to have policies to provide environments for parent–child interactions, thereby making it easier for families to spend time together or have a safe and accessible place to go for recreational activities.

If government housing development projects, for example, were encouraged and supported to offer well–equipped fully staffed libraries in community centres and provide organized recreational and educational activities at the centres this might help low–income families. Accessible educational programs could go a long way in keeping both children and adults engaged in worthwhile activities and away from the potential lure of trouble that parents like Natalie and Andrea describe as happening in their overcrowded neighbourhoods when children have nothing productive to do with their spare time.

Many jobs today are low paying and designated as casual, so that the employer is not required to cover costs of employee benefits such as sick days and paid vacation leave. Very often these low wage jobs have inflexible hours that do not allow a parent to work around their children's school schedules. Single parents simply cannot afford to survive and raise a family on these low wages and shiftwork may be highly disruptive to the family, particularly single–parent families. Thus, there is little financial incentive for them to work and they may choose to remain on social assistance.

A system is needed to prevent the abuse of casual workers, ensuring perhaps after a set period of employment that they are able to receive benefits, or even be able to maintain some of the benefits that are available for those under income assistance, if salary falls below a certain level, namely their health card to cover medical expenses. Without such a standard, businesses can continue to take advantage of workers by hiring low–skilled and poorly educated employees and justify paying them less than a living wage with poor working conditions and no benefits.