Income Security and Social Welfare

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• 2.
• Income Security and Social Welfare

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Income Security Social Services

• Remember the difference?
• Social services are non-monetary i.e. child
  welfare, addiction treatment
• IS provides monetary or financial assistance to
  individual or families
• Both comprise what is known as social welfare.

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Public Income Security

• Social Insurance
• Minimum Income
• Demogrants
• Income Supplementation

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Other Forms of IS

• Tax System when government provides tax breaks
  or when benefits are taxes differently this is
  IS. It effectively increases the income i.e.
  personal exemption, RRSP.
• Private sector employers and voluntary sector.
  Canada has few mandatory employer paid programs,
  but high voluntary (3.5 of GDP)

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What are the IS Programs?

• Employment Insurance
• Workers Compensation
• Social Assistance
• National Child Benefit
• Canada/Quebec Pension Plan
• Disability Benefits
• Old Age Security (OAS)
• Veterans Benefits

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Selective Universal Programs

• Universal benefits are available to everyone in a
  specific category.
• Selective programs target benefits to those
  determined to be in need or eligible based on a
  means test or need test.

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Measuring Poverty

• Low Income Cut-off (LICO)
• Low Income Measure (LIM)
• Market Basket Measure (MBM)

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Low Income Cut-off (LIC0)

• Take the average spent on food, clothing and
  shelter (now 35 of earnings) by family size and
  geographic location and add 20

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Single Mother Poverty

• Canada has the 2nd highest rate of single mother
  poverty in the world at 45.3 (using ½ of median
  income as measure)
• Falling behind all countries except the USA.

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Poverty Gap

• How Much additional income is needed to raise an
  individual or household above LICO.
• Number of people living more than 50 below LICO
  is growing.

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Food Banks and Feeding Programs

• Over 600 food banks in 2003
• Over 40 of those helped are children.
• 81.2 relied predominantly on income security for
  income

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Reforms to IS System

• Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) 1966-1996
• Canada health and Social Transfer (CHST) 1996
• CHT and CST 2004

http//www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/socialunion/
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Social Welfare Economics

• Keynesians
• Monetarist
• Political Economy

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Globalization

• A new stage in the development of capitalism
• What are the impacts on social welfare?