Between 1984 and 1994, the average poor family was six per cent worse off, the study released on Tuesday by the Canadian Council on Social Development points out. It says that "more than half a million Canadian families relied on public income supports to keep them above the poverty line in 1994. Without those government transfers, the number of poor Canadian families would have jumped by 56 per cent that year," it says. A "market poor" family is defined as a family headed by adults who are fit to work and want to work but may not necessarily have a job. Without the transfer payments, such a family would have been $5,700 poorer, the report says. The authors of the report, Grant Schellenberg and David Ross, use a "market-poverty index" which multiplies the number of people whose work incomes didn't raise them to the poverty line by how far they fell below the poverty line. They concluded that poverty for the "market poor" got six per cent worse during the decade under study. According to Schellenberg, while the incidence of "market poverty" has remained constant, its depth has increased. The "market poor" in Ontario were hardest hit, according to the report. In 1994, the earnings of the average poor family in Ontario were $14,749 below the poverty line, even though Ontario had the lowest percentage of "market poor" families. The report ascribed the "causes of poverty" to three basic reasons: low wages, unemployment and periods of time spent outside the work force. 450,000 families were "market poor" in 1994 although one adult in the family had worked throughout the year. Another 100,000 families were poor although both adults worked all year. According to the report, "Quite simply, many jobs do not pay high enough wages to provide even full-time workers with sufficient income to adequately support their families." Schellenberg stresses that many poor people continue having problems just getting into the labour market "to find a job, even a low-wage job, because of lack of affordable day care, disability or involuntary retirement." The study concludes that cutting government spending and debt, achieving lower interest rates and hoping for well-paying jobs to trickle down to the poor doesn't work. "Our findings suggest that the marketplace, as it currently functions, is unlikely to be able to generate enough well-paying jobs for those who are poor," the study concludes. Shawgi Tell University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education [EMAIL PROTECTED]