REFERENCE: Kneebone, R.D., & White,
K.G. (2009). Fiscal retrenchment and social assistance in Canada. Canadian Public Policy, 35(1), 21-40.
To say I struggled with this article
would be the understatement of the century. The struggle was just so,
so real—as they say (I swear, I’ll keep it academic from here on out). I
must admit that I didn’t get a lot out of it. Articles that are very numbers-
and data- and graph-focused (ouch…that didn’t sound very academic, either. I’m
sorry…this is my brain on summer vacation!) tend to induce a lot of
eye-crossing, head-scratching and face-numbing on my part. I’m a much bigger
fan of interview methods, personal essays…articles where I can actually see, hear
and understand the people I’m reading
about.
I can say, however, that in the midst of
all of the eye-crossing, there was still quite a bit of eye-opening!
[As you can see, this is a picture. There’s a reason why this is a picture and not copy-and-pasted text: it’s not WORDS! I honestly thought I was done with math forever after twelfth grade data management. I mean sure, there was a bit of this in introductory psychology, but nothing this complicated! I’m trying really hard not to blame my education, but WHY DON’T I KNOW HOW TO READ THIS? I’m sorry for this rant…luckily I was able to pick out the key points of this article, beneath the calligraphic scrawl. It’s times like these when I’m reminded that I’m not smart at all. What’s this about grad school? Am I perpetuating stereotypes about women being inferior to men in science and mathematics? Okay, I’m shutting up now.]
…I came across one very poignant conclusion: SOCIAL ASSISTANCE IN THIS PROVINCE IS GARBAGE. Along with the other two wealthiest provinces in this country (ironic, isn’t it?), Alberta and British Columbia, we really aren’t very good at helping the most vulnerable members of our society. But what we are in fact really good at is making complicated application processes that ultimately scare people out of even trying to get help, even if they desperately need it.
What happens to these people? Well, as
I’ve heard many times in my education and geography courses, they “fall through
the cracks.” No one ever really seems to elaborate on what “falling through the
cracks” entails, but my guess is that these cracks fall along the lines of
poverty and even homelessness. Interesting how this is happening in the “wealthiest”
provinces in Canada! I can’t seem to be able to get over that.
Kneebone and White provide many reasons
for why drastic cuts were made to social assistance, especially in Ontario,
Alberta and British Columbia. Under these “fiscal pressures” included
“increased program costs” and “rising deficits, debt, and debt-serving costs.”
That’s all well and good. The government needs to make some cuts: we’re in
debt, and people are whining about taxes. I will admit that I don’t know a ton
about politics, and I’m probably being naïve in saying this: but of everything
you can make cuts to, why are social services being targeted? We want to help
people to get back on their feet, give them the tools to enter or re-enter the
workforce. Does this not help our economy? I’m sure other cuts are being made
elsewhere, but social services is something we desperately need. I just hope
that we never end up following the United States’ lead and adopt this shitty
“everyone for themselves,” “we’d-rather-take-the-risk-of-getting-sick-and-paying-thousands-of-dollars-than-help-anyone-else”
mentality. When you hear about cuts like these being made, you can’t help but
ask yourself: what’s next?
Even though I wasn’t a huge fan of how
the information in this article was presented (that’s more a critique of my own
lack of understanding than it is a critique of the authors’ work), the
information I was able to pull out of it has still managed to motivate me. In
the coming month, I’m going to be working with information pertaining to the
Niagara Region specifically concerning social services. From what I’ve gathered
so far from both my professor’s comments as well as the article I have linked below
this paragraph, Niagara is not a great place to live. Contrary to this bubble I’ve
been stuck in my entire life thinking how fortunate I am to grow up in Niagara
Falls, I’m realizing now that if my family was not in the good financial state
that they are in as a result of their occupations, I would be having a pretty
miserable time. The place that I’ve always had positive associations with would
make me feel alone and unsupported with nowhere to go—especially as a woman.
This article is a testament to that:
Though the article talks about each category in more detail, this chart provides a useful summary to show us St. Catharines/Niagara women just how great we really have it (if it didn’t come across, I was being extremely sarcastic). The article focused on ranking Canada’s 25 largest metropolitan areas…and out of those 25 areas, we came in 16th. If you ask me…that’s pretty awful. We’re not last, granted, but we’re still in the bottom half. Since this is a ranking of Canada’s best and worst places to live, that would mean we are one of the WORST! I mean…20th in economic security?! 22nd in health?! I’m truly shocked and appalled. Those are probably the two most important categories and we essentially failed both.
Anyway. Now it’s time to return to
Kneebone and White. I tried to focus my notes on Ontario specifically since I’m
going to be working more intimately with Niagara very soon. In my typical
fashion, I have included the quotations (which are mostly facts and figures)
that stood out to me the most and provided my own comments and questions. In my
not-so-typical fashion, I have also included the graph that Kneebone and White
developed to show the decline in the social assistance rate in Ontario at the
end of this blog.
Here it goes!
“In 1991, further reforms made some
aspects of special assistance mandatory, increased STEP funding, and eliminated
compulsory home visits—changes which contributed to further increases in the
social-assistance rate” (25)
What I want to know is: in these years
where obtaining social assistance was comparatively “lax” and the numbers of
people obtaining social assistance increased, was this because people were just
taking advantage of the system, or is it actually because more people were able
to fulfill their needs? I’ve heard a lot about the “hidden poor” but, true to
its name, it’s not something I have any experience with personally. Niagara
Falls is a city where until I was probably a teenager, I thought everyone was
as affluent as me. Everywhere I went, I saw nice houses. Everyone I went to
school with wore nice clothes. Everything around me seemed, well…nice. Neat.
Clean and put-together. My parents and grandparents did a good job of reminding
me that there are “starving kids in Africa” and so I should probably eat the
rest of my grilled cheese (why my eating the rest of my food has anything to do
with helping the starving kids in Africa or having any impact whatsoever is
seriously beyond me…) but I had no idea that poverty existed in my own
backyard. My grandparents live on the other end of town—in a neighbourhood
filled with other retirement-age folk like themselves—but also filled with some
less-fortunate families. How do you pick these families out of a neighbourhood
like this? Do we look for the homes that are maybe a little shabbier than the
others…the ones with a broken window, maybe parts of the roof peeling off, and
an overgrown lawn? My lawn is constantly overgrown because no one in a
household of three insanely busy work- and school-focused women have the time
to cut it every week (do people mow the lawn every week? Two weeks? Who am I
kidding…I’ve never mowed the lawn before). But does that mean we’re
impoverished? If someone hasn’t gotten around to patching up their roof, does
that mean they’re in need of social assistance? The people with the manicured
lawn might be struggling a lot more than we think. You just can’t make
assumptions. Who really needs it, and who doesn’t? How do we make that
decision? Something tells me that there are more people who actually need help
than there are those who “take advantage.”
“…the process was criticized for
restricting entry and denying benefits through excessive requests for
information and a complicated application process. However, as the Human
Resources Development Canada (HRDC 2000) suggests, this was the intent; processes
like these are intended to ‘scare’ people away from applying for social assistance”
(28)
The above quotation was taken from the
section of the article that talks about Ontario specifically. For that reason, I
thought it was especially important to include the information Kneebone and
White found about our difficult application process. We don’t want to spend the
money, and so we make it next to impossible for people to claim welfare.
“The dummy variables [which are
variables that indicate years where social assistance was uncharacteristically
easy to obtain and uncharacteristically difficult to obtain: so essentially,
they’re figures of the extreme ends of both sides of the spectrum] are large
and statistically significant. They suggest that changes to the approach to
administrating social-assistance programs in Alberta, Ontario, and British
Columbia reduced social-assistance rates in those provinces by an average of
1.2 percentage points after one year and 4.5 percentage points in the long run”
(33)
When we’re informed that our social assistance
rates have declined, what are we supposed to think of this decline? Are we made
to believe that this decline has to do with the fact that more people are
finding meaningful employment and thus the demand is much less? Or, as
indicated in the aforementioned quotation, has the application process gotten
so complicated that less people are being supported and are instead plummeting down
into those infamous cracks? Maybe on paper it looks more like the former…but if
you compare poverty and homelessness rates, the reality of the latter would
certainly come across.
“Ontario was witness to the largest
decline in a social-assistance rate. By 2003, the rate had fallen by 11.1
percentage points from its high of 19.5 percent in 1993. Of this fall explained
by our regression, 18.2 percent was due to a fall in the unemployment rate,
25.3 percent was due to a fall in the real value of the social-assistance
benefit, 9.4 percent was due to an increase in the real value of earned
incomes, and 47.1 percent was due to the change captured by the dummy variable
which is the best available measure of the influence of changes in
administrative procedures introduced in Ontario after 1996” (34)
Hmmm....based on these figures, it doesn’t
look like a greater employment rate has much to do with the decline in social
assistance. Only 18.2 percent of the fall can be explained by a decrease in the
unemployment rate! That’s pretty lame if you ask me. Oh, and look! Only 9.4
percent of the fall can be explained by increased incomes! The icing on top of
the cake—which makes everything all the more clear here—is that almost half of
the fall, at 47.1 percent, can be explained by “changes in administrative
procedures.” If you break everything down as Kneebone and White do in this
article, it becomes apparent that the decrease in social assistance rates have
virtually nothing to do with improvements in people’s economic stability, and a
lot to do with our province’s difficult application process.
“In those three provinces which
introduced the most significant changes in administrative procedures, the state
of the economy, as measured by the responses to changes in labour market
tightness and changes in earned income, accounted for between 18 percent and 30
percent of the reduction in the social-assistance rate. Thus, the state of
economy deserves ‘credit’ for a sizable amount of the fall in the
social-assistance rate in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia” (34)
“[B]etween 18 and 30 percent” refers to
the three provinces holistically. 30 percent is not a completely pathetic
figure, but if you ask me: 18 percent is. And this 18 percent, as mentioned
previously, belongs to Ontario. So even though the authors are playing devil’s
advocate here and giving some credit to improvements in the economy to explain
the changes in the social assistance rates among these three provinces, I’m
playing devil’s advocate to their devil’s advocate…if that makes sense. At the
end of this research term, my goal will have been to tackle local issues, and
it is quite evident that Ontario has some pretty big issues! Sure, we can give
that measly 18.2 percent of the decline in social assistance to improvements in
our economy, but we also have to give 47.1 percent of those changes to that
ridiculous application process!
Overall, in the author’s own findings,
they discovered the following with regards to decline in the social assistance rate:
“…changes in administrative procedures
accounted for between one-half and two-thirds of the fall in the social-assistance
rate explained by our regression” (36)
Here’s a more detailed look at Ontario.
Even though it’s a little outdated, I’m sure if this graph was continued to the
present day, the trend would only continue…
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