IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sls/resrep/1912.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Holes in the Social Safety Net: Poverty, Inequality and Social Assistance in Canada

Author

Listed:
  • Inez Hillel

Abstract

This report looks at Canada’s social safety net before the onset of the crisis caused by COVID-19 and collapsing oil prices. It sets the stage by reviewing trends in poverty and inequality between 1976 and 2018. The report examines the federal government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy and its success in reducing poverty for children and seniors. Working-age adults without children have experienced the smallest relative decrease in poverty and currently have the highest poverty rates among any age group. The report analyzes general eligibility criteria and work and training requirements for social assistance, and the adequacy of welfare. National trends show that welfare dependency has fallen significantly between 1998 and 2018. Other significant trends show an increase in the percentage of social assistance recipients reporting a disability, a growing proportion of single adults on welfare and a decrease in the number of families with children receiving social assistance. To reduce poverty and improve welfare adequacy, this report recommends increasing social assistance benefits, raising the minimum wage, improving earning supplements for low-wage workers and extending in-kind benefits to all low-income.

Suggested Citation

  • Inez Hillel, 2020. "Holes in the Social Safety Net: Poverty, Inequality and Social Assistance in Canada," CSLS Research Reports 2020-06, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    • Handle: RePEc:sls:resrep:1912
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.csls.ca/reports/csls2020-06.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jasmin Thomas, 2016. "Trends in Low-Wage Employment in Canada: Incidence, Gap and Intensity, 1997-2014," CSLS Research Reports 2016-10, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    2. Kourtney Koebel & Dionne Pohler, 2019. "Expanding the Canada Workers Benefit to Design a Guaranteed Basic Income," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 45(3), pages 283-309, September.
    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. Geranda Notten & Fatima Tuz Zohora & Charles Plante & Rachel Laforest, 2022. "Two decades of poverty reduction politics in Canada:Better for single parent families and single working age adults?," Working Papers 2203E Classification-I31,, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.

    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. Anita Rizvi & Madeleine Kearns & Michael Dignam & Alison Coates & Melissa K. Sharp & Olivia Magwood & Patrick R. Labelle & Nour Elmestekawy & Sydney Rossiter & Ali A. A. Al‐Zubaidi & Omar Dewidar & Le, 2024. "Effects of guaranteed basic income interventions on poverty‐related outcomes in high‐income countries: A systematic review and meta‐analysis," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(2), June.
    2. James Uguccioni, Andrew Sharpe and Richard Beard, 2017. "The Human Development Index In Canada: Ranking the Provinces and Territories Internationally, 2000-2015: An Update," CSLS Research Reports 2017-06, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    3. Anita Rizvi & Vivian Welch & Marcia Gibson & Patrick R. Labelle & Christina Pollard & George A. Wells & Elizabeth Kristjansson, 2022. "PROTOCOL: Effects of guaranteed basic income interventions on poverty‐related outcomes in high‐income countries: A systematic review," Campbell Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(4), December.
    4. Koebel, Kourtney & Pohler, Dionne, 2024. "The effect of an unconditional government income transfer on the labour supply of lowincome workers," CLEF Working Paper Series 76, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    5. Tedds, Lindsay M. & Crisan, I. Daria, 2020. "Evaluating the Existing Basic Income Simulation Literature," MPRA Paper 105915, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Green, David & Kesselman, Jonathan Rhys & Tedds, Lindsay M., 2021. "Covering All the Basics: Reforms for a More Just Society," MPRA Paper 105902, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Wayne Simpson & Harvey Stevens & Lee Stevens & Herb Emery, 2022. "A Guaranteed Basic Income for Canadians: Off the Table or Within Reach?," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 15(20), June.
    8. Green, David A. & Kesselman, Jonathan Rhys & Tedds, Lindsay M. & Crisan, I. Daria & Petit, Gillian, 2020. "Basic Income Simulations for the Province of British Columbia," MPRA Paper 105918, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Miguel Gómez de Antonio & Noemí Villazán Pellejero, 2023. "Propuesta de implantación de políticas de complemento salarial en el Ingreso Mínimo Vital y en el IRPF: un análisis empírico con EUROMOD," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 245(2), pages 35-69, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Poverty; Inequality; Social Assistance; Canada; Welfare; Living Standards; Earning Supplements; Low-Wage Workers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:sls:resrep:1912. 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: CSLS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cslssca.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.