Warning: Poverty message a `downer'
Apr. 18, 2006. 01:00 AM
JIM COYLE, Toronto Star

There was nothing new, but maybe something serendipitous, in the
observations yesterday on the Star's letters page by York University
professor Dennis Raphael.

The long-time anti-poverty advocate, responding to a Sunday Star feature
that fancifully envisioned Toronto's future, said ``nothing to improve the
quality of life will really be accomplished unless the grinding poverty,
hunger and homelessness that stalks the city is eliminated.''

As it happens, Raphael, an associate professor in York's school of health
policy and management, and colleagues Toba Bryant and Marcia Roux will have
a book launch on Thursday. In Staying Alive, he once more makes the case
that health is often dependent less on medical or lifestyle issues than on
government decisions that influence the distribution of income, the degree
of social security, and the quality and availability of education, food and
housing.

In short, he says, poverty makes people sick. Not only that, the gap
between rich and poor is probably a bigger threat to public health than the
exotic germs and ailments that so fascinate news media and dominate those
pages and newscasts not given over to celebrities or conspicuous
consumption.

Lately, Raphael has found himself in the decidedly unfamiliar position of
having some company in raising issues of poverty and the wealth gap.

Earlier this month, the New Yorker's John Cassidy wrote an article
considering the notion of ``relative deprivation'' and looking at whether
thresholds established as ``poverty lines'' have any real meaning... SNIP

http://tinyurl.com/el2n6

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