IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/25952.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Assistance Benefit Rates and the Employment Rate of Lone Mothers

Author

Listed:
  • Kapsalis, Constantine

Abstract

The results show that the increase in social assistance benefits has been a major factor behind the decline in employment rates of lone mothers in Ontario. It is stimated that each $1,000 increase in benefit rates is associated with a 1.9 percentage points reduction in the employment rate of lone mothers. As a result, 95 per cent of the 5.9 percentage point increase in the Quebec-Ontario employment rate gap of lone mothers over the period 1988-90 can be attributed to the increase in Ontario benefits relative to Quebec by $2,962. Labour market conditions do not appear to have had a major impact on employment rates in Ontario over the period 1988-90. This is not very urprising given that the significant deterioration of the Ontario labour market took place after 1990. In particular, the unemployment rate of lone mothers in Ontario increased from 9.2 to 12.0 per cent in 1988-90, while it doubled by the year 1995 (21.7 per cent).

Suggested Citation

  • Kapsalis, Constantine, 1996. "Social Assistance Benefit Rates and the Employment Rate of Lone Mothers," MPRA Paper 25952, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:25952
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/25952/1/MPRA_paper_25952.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin D. Dooley, 1994. "The Converging Market Work Patterns of Married Mothers and Lone Mothers in Canada," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 29(2), pages 600-620.
    2. Grady, Patrick & Kapsalis, Constantine, 1995. "Income Security Reform and the Concept of a Guaranteed Annual Income," MPRA Paper 18831, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Michael Charette & Ronald Meng, 1994. "The Determinants of Welfare Participation of Female Heads of Household in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 27(2), pages 290-306, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kapsalis, Constantine, 1999. "Social Assistance and the Employment Rate of Lone Mothers: An Analysis of Ontario's Live Experiment," MPRA Paper 25951, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kapsalis, Constantine, 1999. "Social Assistance and the Employment Rate of Lone Mothers: An Analysis of Ontario's Live Experiment," MPRA Paper 25951, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Martin D. Dooley, 1999. "The Evolution of Welfare Participation Among Canadian Lone Mothers From 1973-1991," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 32(3), pages 589-612, May.
    3. Stephen Whelan, 2010. "The Interaction between Income Support Programs," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 24(4), pages 407-440, December.
    4. Jennifer Stewart & Martin D. Dooley, 1999. "The Duration of Spells on Welfare and Off Welfare Among Lone Mothers in Ontario," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 25(s1), pages 47-72, November.
    5. Finnie, Ross & Meng, Ronald, 2006. "The Importance of Functional Literacy: Reading and Math Skills and Labour Market Outcomes of High School Drop-outs," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2006275e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    6. Nezih Guner & John Knowles, 2000. "Marriage, Fertility And Divorce: A Dynamic Equilibrium Analysis Of Social Policy In Canada," Computing in Economics and Finance 2000 352, Society for Computational Economics.
    7. Berg, Nathan & Gabel, Todd, 2010. "New Reform Strategies and Welfare Participation in Canada," MPRA Paper 26591, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Irvine, Ian & Finnie, Ross & Sceviour, Roger, 2004. "Welfare Dynamics in Canada: The Role of Individual Attributes and Economic-policy Variables," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2004231e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    9. Vicky Barham & Rose Anne Devlin, 2003. "Child-Support Policies and the Well-Being of Children: Income versus Wealth-Based Measures," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 29(3), pages 351-365, September.
    10. Hou, Feng & Picot, Garnett & Myers, Karen & Myles, John, 2006. "Why Did Employment and Earnings Rise Among Lone Mothers During the 1980s and 1990s?," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2006282e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    11. Hou, Feng & Picot, Garnett & Myers, Karen & Myles, John, 2008. "The Demographic Foundations of Rising Employment and Earnings Among Single Mothers in Canada and the United States, 1980 to 2000," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2008305e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    12. Louis N. Christofides, 2000. "Social assistance and labour supply," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(3), pages 715-741, August.
    13. Nathan Berg & Todd Gabel, 2015. "Did Canadian welfare reform work? The effects of new reform strategies on social assistance participation," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(2), pages 494-528, May.
    14. Chan, Winnie & Frenette, Marc & Irvine, Ian & Finnie, Ross & Sceviour, Roger, 2005. "Academic Outcomes of Public and Private High School Students: What Lies Behind the Differences? [Social Assistance Use in Canada: National and Provincial Trends in Incidence, Entry and Exit]," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2005245e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    15. Arleen Leibowitz & Jacob Klerman, 1995. "Explaining changes in married mothers’ employment over time," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 32(3), pages 365-378, August.
    16. Martin D. Dooley & Stéphane Gascon & Pierre Lefebvre & Philip Merrigan, 2000. "Lone Female Headship and Welfare Policy in Canada," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 35(3), pages 587-602.
    17. Bernard Fortin & Guy Lacroix, 1997. "Welfare Benefits, Minimum Wage Rate and the Duration of Welfare Spells: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Canada," CIRANO Working Papers 97s-25, CIRANO.
    18. Guyonne Kalb, 1998. "An Australian Model for Labour Supply and Welfare Participation in Two-Adult Households," Discussion Papers 0082, University of New South Wales, Social Policy Research Centre.
    19. Picot, Garnett & Frenette, Marc, 2003. "Life After Welfare: The Economic Well-being of Welfare Leavers in Canada During the 1990s," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2003192e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    20. Irvine, Ian & Finnie, Ross & Sceviour, Roger, 2004. "La dynamique de l'aide sociale au Canada : le role des attributs individuels et des variables economiques et politiques," Direction des études analytiques : documents de recherche 2004231f, Statistics Canada, Direction des études analytiques.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social assistance; welfare; lone mothers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:25952. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.