"Regardless of the socio-economic status of his/her family and community, every child has the right to childhood experiences which promote the chances of developing into a healthy, well-adjusted and productive adult."

As a guideline for developing indicators, the original framework document listed the following determinants of child well-being:

• Economic security
• Health
• Readiness to learn
• Safety
• Positive parenting.

The technical working group for the report card commenced regular meetings in January 2002. The group includes staff from City divisions including Children's Services, Public Health, Parks and Recreation, Social Development and Administration and Toronto Public Library, as well as representatives from the Toronto District School Board, Toronto Catholic District School Board, Children's Aid Society of Toronto, Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto and Jewish Family and Child Services of Toronto. Working group members provided data as well as interpretative and contextual information on the indicators, determinants, strategies and initiatives outlined in the report. Toronto Children's Services staff took the lead in the final processing and mapping of data, and coordinating and producing the Report Card.

Methodology
To give the most current picture of the demographics of the city, this report relied on a variety of different Statistics Canada sources. The most up-to-date data for the City of Toronto available for analysis is from the 2001 Census. However, at the time of this report, only the population data detailing age and sex has been released. Complementary data from Census 2001 data on family income, immigration, etc., will not be available until 2003, and will be analyzed in future report cards.

For the purposes of this report, population data is based on the 2001 Census. To highlight areas with high proportions of young children living in low-income families , we used 1996 Census data.

To track changes in family income, this report uses the most current data available which is based on the standardized small area data tables for the City of Toronto, based on 1999 and 1995 tax returns of families with children 0 -17 years.

Although there is no official definition of poverty, we have used two different working measures:

1. LICO - Statistics Canada's Low Income Cut-off identifies low-income families as families that spend a significantly higher proportion of their income on food, shelter and clothing than an average Canadian family of comparable size and community of residence. At present, to be considered low income under the LICO definition, a family must spend more than 54.7% of its gross income on these necessities. The LICO for a family of two in Toronto is $22,734; for a family of four, it is $34,226 (Canadian Council on Social Development, 2000). This report uses the LICO measure as the definition of low income when referring to income data from the 1996 census.

2. LIM - Statistics Canada's Low Income Measure (LIM) is a relative measure based on median incomes adjusted for family size (no adjustments are made for community size). In 1999, the LIM for a family of two parents and two children was $25,700. For a lone parent and child the LIM was $17,780. This report uses the LIM measure as the definition of low income when referring to Statistics Canada 1999 small area administrative data - tax filer data.