IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fth/lavape/9817.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Dynamics of Welfare Participation in Quebec

Author

Listed:
  • Duclos, J.Y.
  • Fortin, B.
  • Lacroix, G.
  • Roberge, H.

Abstract

Few studies have examined the dynamics of participation in welfare in Québec and elsewhere in Canada. This paper sheds some light on that important topic, which is crucial for the understanding of the features and of the effects of welfare programmes, and for the analysis of possible reforms. For this, we use a large representative sample of welfare participants between 1979 and 1993. We find that the majority of new spells last for less than one year. Nevertheless, that a large proportion of ongoing spells are of long duration. We estimate for instance that the 50% shortest spells account for only 10% of total welfare spending. Overall, single men leave welfare more rapidly than single women, young people faster than their elders, and more educated individuals sooner than the less educated. The welfare reform of 1989 appears to have reduced significantly the rate of exit among participants under 30. Returns onto welfare generally occur shortly after exit, and at a rate which diminishes rapidly with time. Finally, we propose a measure of welfare dependence which comes up being almost twice as large for single-parent families as for all other categories.

Suggested Citation

  • Duclos, J.Y. & Fortin, B. & Lacroix, G. & Roberge, H., 1998. "The Dynamics of Welfare Participation in Quebec," Papers 9817, Laval - Recherche en Politique Economique.
    • Handle: RePEc:fth:lavape:9817
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Bernard Fortin & Guy Lacroix & Jean-François Thibault, 1999. "The Interaction of UI and Welfare, and the Dynamics of Welfare Participation of Single Parents," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 25(s1), pages 115-132, November.
    2. Ross Finnie & Ian Irvine, 2008. "The Welfare Enigma: Explaining the Dramatic Decline in Canadians' Use of Social Assistance, 1993-2005," C.D. Howe Institute Commentary, C.D. Howe Institute, issue 267, June.
    3. Centre for the Study of Living Standards, 2002. "The Impact of the National Child Benefit Supplement on the Low Income Status of Canadian Families with Children: The SPSD/M Results," CSLS Research Reports 02cb, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Stephen Whelan, 2010. "The Interaction between Income Support Programs," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 24(4), pages 407-440, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    SOCIAL POLICY ; SOCIAL INSURANCE;

    JEL classification:

    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • E25 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution

    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:fth:lavape:9817. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/delvlca.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.