Saskatchewan had the highest child poverty rate of any Canadian province in 2023. Below the line, families sat $13,000 to $17,000 short — and the deficit widened with each additional child for lone parents.
Where Saskatchewan sits — national context
Child poverty rate (ages 0–17), CFLIM-AT, by province, 2023. Territories shown in note below. Saskatchewan's rate was the highest of any province, nearly nine percentage points above the national average.
Territories — Nunavut 38.8% · Northwest Territories 24.1% · Yukon 12.0%. Excluded from the strip for visual scale, but Nunavut sits well above any province.
Median family income vs. CFLIM-AT poverty line
After-tax median family income for households below the Census Family Low Income Measure, compared against the line itself. Saskatchewan, 2023.
After-tax median family income Poverty line (CFLIM-AT) Shortfall
What the provincial average conceals
The 27.1% provincial rate folds on-reserve and off-reserve populations together. CFLIM-AT data via the T1 Family File does include First Nations children living on reserve who are captured by tax filings — unlike the Market Basket Measure, which excludes reserves from Canada's official poverty line entirely. But Indigenous identity is not tracked in the T1FF dataset itself, so the family-type breakdown above is identity-blind. Disaggregation by reserve geography comes from a separate Statistics Canada custom tabulation of 219 reserves with available data.
The on-reserve disparity is the dominant driver of Saskatchewan's provincial ranking. Two of every three children in the Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River riding live below the line — the highest concentration of child poverty in any federal electoral district in Canada. The riding's rate rose 5.4 percentage points from 2022 to 2023. None of this is visible in the family-type chart above, because the underlying T1FF data cannot be disaggregated by Indigenous identity within a household.
Key finding
For lone-parent households, the shortfall widens with each additional child — from $15,000 with one child to $17,000 with two. Coupled households hold steadier, between $13,000 and $15,000. The gap is not a transition phase. It is the floor.
Saskatchewan's 27.1% provincial child poverty rate, highest of any province in 2023, conceals a 70.1% rate on reserve and a 62.4% rate in the federal riding covering its north. The depth-of-poverty figures above describe the shortfall an averaged Saskatchewan family below the line faces; the populations the averaging hides are facing it more often, and almost certainly more deeply.
Provincial rates — Campaign 2000, Investing in Tomorrow: 2025 Child and Family Poverty Report Card (published February 2026), using Statistics Canada Table 11-10-0018-01 (after-tax low-income status of tax filers and dependants based on CFLIM-AT, by family type), 2023 reference year. Income vs. line — Statistics Canada Table 11-10-0020-01 (CFLIM-AT thresholds by census family size) and Table 11-10-0018-01, Saskatchewan, 2023. Median figures describe families already below the line; the shortfall is the distance from that median to the line, not from the line to zero. On-reserve and riding rates — Campaign 2000 (Feb 2026), citing Statistics Canada T1 Family File custom tabulations covering 219 reserves with available data, and federal-electoral-district-level CFLIM-AT data for 2023. Note — Income and threshold values rounded to the nearest $500. CFLIM-AT = Census Family Low Income Measure, after tax. The T1FF dataset does not record Indigenous identity, so the family-type breakdown cannot be disaggregated by FN/Métis/Inuit status. National rate covers the 10 provinces and 3 territories combined.
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The Shrinking Safety · SK · 2023
Saskatchewan had the highest child poverty rate of any Canadian province in 2023.
CFLIM-AT measure. After every tax credit and transfer the federal and provincial governments had on offer.
Saskatchewan, all children · 2023
27.1%
of Saskatchewan children lived below the CFLIM-AT poverty line.
National rate: 18.3%. SK ranked #1 of 10 provinces.
SK vs. Canada · child poverty · 2023
8.8 percentage points above the national average.
Lone parent + 2 children · SK · 2023
$17,000
below the poverty line — for a Saskatchewan lone parent with two children.
Median after-tax income: $28,500. Poverty line: $45,500. After every credit and transfer.
The pattern · Lone parents in SK · 2023
The shortfall widens with each child.
Lone parent + 1 child−$15,000
Lone parent + 2 children−$17,000
For couples, the shortfall holds steady at $13K–$15K. The deepening with each child is specific to lone parents.
Saskatchewan, on reserve · 2023
70.1%
of children on Saskatchewan reserves lived below the CFLIM-AT poverty line.
The 27.1% provincial average conceals this. Highest on-reserve rate of any province in Canada.
Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River
Two of every three children
in this northern Saskatchewan riding lived below the poverty line in 2023.
62.4% child poverty rate — the highest of any federal electoral district in Canada. Up 5.4 points from 2022.
What the data doesn't show
Federal tax data can't disaggregate by Indigenous identity.
CFLIM-AT (via the T1 Family File) includes on-reserve filers — unlike the Market Basket Measure, which excludes reserves from Canada's official poverty line entirely.
But Indigenous identity isn't a variable in the dataset. Family-type breakdowns remain identity-blind.
After every credit and transfer · 2023
$13,000 to $17,000 short — every family type, every configuration.
Low-income Saskatchewan families sat $13K–$17K below the official poverty line in 2023 — after every tax credit, every transfer, every benefit Canada and the province had on offer.
The gap is not a transition phase. It is the floor.
Read the full breakdown
theshrinkingsafety.net
Saskatchewan's 2023 poverty gap — national context, family-type depth, and the on-reserve disparity the provincial average conceals.