Possible question

First question is very good [just thought i'd agree with everyone]. I was wondering what you guys thought about a question pertaining to the minimum wage such as, "To what degree do you believe increasing the minimum wage serves to help the poor?" You could then present it as a scale perhaps, "Help a lot, Help a little, Negligible, Hinder a little, Hinder a lot" or just yes or no?

I really like the idea of discussing the minimum wage, especially in light of how often its being talked about in the media lately. I like the idea of a scale for that sort of question, but is there any way we could link it to asking about whether the minimum wage should be set by the provinces, or as a uniform federal minimum?

The minimum wage is a great topic regarding poverty, so to tackle it I think we need more than one question. We definitely need to get people's opinions on whether the minimum wage hurts or helps the poor. We could phrase it by asking "Do you think the minimum wage should be a) much lower b) a little lower c) same d) a little higher e) much higher" or both ways.

As far as provincial or federal, we could do a follow up by asking "If you think the minimum wage should be changed, do you believe it should be changed for a) all of Canada b) your province c) your municipality ?"

Also, this minimum wage thing should probably be in a new thread, to make the discussion a little more organized/cleaner. Does anyone know how to do that?

I agree that Trevor's question is quite good, and also agree with the fact that it would be better as a two-part question. In response to Andre, I unfortunately think we're only allowed this one thread to work with, which is unfortunate.

In response to the topic of minimum wage, perhaps we could also ask something along the lines of "do you think the amount of minimum wage and its variation across provinces directly is responsible for varying levels of poverty?" or something along those lines. I know it's poorly worded, but just an idea.

Since there are so many factors that cause different levels of poverty from province to province, I think the question should be something along the lines of "how impactful is the minimum wage and its variation across provinces on the level of poverty in each province"? a) very high b) somewhat high etc... Simple yes or no questions can make it seem like there's only one thing (minimum wage in this case) that causes poverty.

I like the idea of adding the "provincial or federal" dimension to the question and, echoing what Jake said, it would be interesting to see what people thought regarding the correlation between each province's level of poverty and its minimum wage though it might simply be the same as asking if they thought raising the minimum wage hurts or helps. Its difficult to see someone saying "I believe we need to raise the minimum wage to help the poor," and then saying, "but i don't think there's a relation between the minimum wage and reducing poverty from province to province."

I agree with everyone so far that incorporating a federal/provincial element opens the question up to greater dialogue. However, I think Patrick has a good point (if I'm interpreting it correctly) that the federal/provincial element may render the question somewhat vague and off-directional. What I mean by this is that we could pose a question that speaks personally to the respondent's opinion of wage increase in relation to poverty reducement. Maybe we could narrow it down a bit, while still retaining the dual aspect, as in:

"Would you be personally in favour of a provincial wage increase if such a measure would reduce the overall poverty rate in the province?"

a.) Yes b.) No c.) Maybe d.) I don't know

Haha! Only thing I don't like about the question is that it equates a wage increase with reducing the poverty rate whereas what I was hoping to find out [and this comes down to what you're interested in] was whether people already believed that increasing the minimum wage helped reducing poverty. I think if increasing the min wage guaranteed a lower poverty level it would be nowhere near as controversial a topic.

I agree with Patrick. That question that Jennifer brought up is indicating that raising the provincial wage does reduce the overall poverty rate in the province. However, we're not sure if that is a guaranteed fact.

i also agree with Patrick and Rawan. we dont want to lead people. most people would assume that increasing the min. wage would help the poor ... but that is not the case it actually makes it harder to find employment, particularly for the most vulnerable job-seekers.

and by the poor ... do you mean those with lower income? or homeless? ... we got to define the term or be more specific.

It seems my assessment was not clearly worded and I see that now. Speaking to Dalia's point - just as a point of clarification and curiosity - is your assessment that increasing the minimum wage actually makes it harder to find employment, particularly for the most vulnerable job-seekers based on empirical research?

And although 'poor' was not mentioned in the first posting, I suppose I referring to those individuals who fall below the national poverty line.

Is the national poverty line the measurement we want to use? Within that one line, there's also the Low Income Cut-off, which is measured before and after taxation, and thus provides different statistics. Do we want to specify which measurement we mean, or just the national poverty line in general?

Yes Jennifer thats what my assessment is ... so I suggest instead of leading people in which i think the below question does: "Would you be personally in favour of a provincial wage increase if such a measure would reduce the overall poverty rate in the province?"

maybe we can instead ask two separate questions.

1. would you be in favor of a provincial wage increase?

answer: a) yes b) no

2. do you think that a provincial wage increase will reduce or increase the overall poverty rate in the province?

and the poor ... was mentioned in another post sorry for the confusion ... but i define poor in the other post.

answer: a) increase b) decrease c) not make an impact

something along those lines.

I agree with DaliaElramly in the sense that we are breaking down the question into two parts, rather than having one very long question. Also, it would also get opinions regarding whether or not people see the need for increasing minimum wage, regardless of how it will improve the overall poverty line rate in the province, and then the next question will be on what they think the impact would be.