It is the stated goal of the Canadian federal government to foster “a strong and inclusive labour market that provides every Canadian with opportunities for a good quality of life.” The legacy of COVID has, however, led to policy incoherence, with some significant reforms directly putting this goal into question.
Continue reading “What will COVID Mean for the Future of Fiscal and Social Policy?”Category: poverty
“We don’t have a chance in hell …”, Canada’s poverty reduction strategy needs real voice
The Minister of Employment and Social Development in the Canadian federal government, Ahmed Hussen, recently tabled an annual report taking stock of the country’s poverty reduction strategy.
The advisory council responsible for the reported dedicated it “to all those courageous people who shared their stories, successes and struggles with the Council in the hope that we would in turn share them across Canada. You are at the heart of this report.”
People with “Lived experience” is how policy wonks and political staffers refer to them, stressing the importance of consulting citizens who are struggling with the challenges of living in poverty and facing the barriers of moving toward a better life.
My three-year old post explaining Canada’s official poverty line continually garners views because it ranks high on a Google search for “Canada poverty line.”
This means it gets read by a whole group of people who are not policy wonks, and often by people with “lived experience,” who often cry out and share their stories by proposing a comment for my web page, which if it has done any good helped them to realize how far below the poverty line they may well be.
I hesitate approving their comments for public viewing because of their revealing and personal nature.
But maybe I shouldn’t. They have voice, but they need to be listened to. So here is one more voice that encapsulates so much, and in many different ways, of what makes policy to the poor so important, but also reveals the limits of current actions.
Social Policy, Now: Next steps for income support and income insurance in Canada
Three next steps for social policy involve: 1. Maximizing auto-enrollment and just-in-time program delivery; 2. Offering full income support with engagement; and 3. Offering broad income and earnings insurance with agency. In this post I introduce the detailed discussion of these proposals that you can also download.
On March 24th, 2020 the Government of Canada Tabled Bill C-13, “An Act respecting certain measures in response to COVID-19,” in the House of Commons, and the next day the Bill received Royal Assent, unleashing the most extensive and quickest change to Canadian social policy in living memory, if not in the history of the country.
The Canada Emergency Response Benefit is the most notable part of the Bill, offering $2,000 of income support every four weeks to all working age Canadians who made at least $5,000 in the previous 12 months and lost their source of income due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Almost immediately the public policy discussion turned to “what’s next?” Certainly this was so in the short-term as the government and the public service became fully engaged in meeting the evolving needs of citizens and businesses in response to the most serious health and economic crises the country has experienced since World War II.
But increasingly, as the weeks and months passed, it was also so in the longer term: What’s next for the design of social policy in light of the needs and the gaps that the COVID-19 crisis has revealed?
This is the question I address in a detailed presentation that you can download.
In this post I introduce the issues and options for discussing the next steps for social policy, the word “Now” in the title having three meanings that guide this approach.
Continue reading “Social Policy, Now: Next steps for income support and income insurance in Canada”
Poverty and equality of opportunity: three pictures to motivate policy for social mobility
Read my comments presented to the Public Economics Forum on “Intergenerationally Disadvantaged: Newest Evidence and What it Means for Policy,” organized by the Melbourne Institute for Applied Economic and Social Research, on November 26th, 2019 in Canberra, Australia.
Social mobility varies across countries, but it varies in a particular way, a way that I argue is relevant for the conduct of public policy.
Inequality begets inequality. Up to 50% of income inequality is passed on to the next generation in countries like the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United States, but only 20% or even less in countries like Norway, Denmark and Finland, where there is a much smaller gap between parent incomes.
But different kinds of inequality matter in different ways for social mobility.
Research using the variation of social mobility within countries like the United States and Canada shows that intergenerational cycles of low income are more likely in communities that have more bottom half inequality, the correlation with overall inequality and with top end inequality being much weaker. Upward mobility is easier when the poorest incomes are not that far off from middle incomes.
The bottom line for public policy is don’t let inequality increase in the bottom half of the income distribution, indeed strive to reduce it in a way that encourages labour market and social engagement.
My Mandate Letter for the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development
The first step a newly elected Prime Minister takes on the road to governing is choosing the members of cabinet and giving them their marching orders. Prime Minister Trudeau set to this task with zeal when he was first elected in the autumn of 2015, and surprised many by making the mandate letters public. The CD Howe Institute asked a number of experts to draft their versions, and this post offers a slightly longer version of the mandate letter I wrote for the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development published by the Institute.
All Canadians have a right to live the life they value with dignity.
As Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, your actions should be governed by this principle, and directed to three concerns:
- promoting economic well-being and ensuring that those facing challenging circumstances are able to fully participate in our society with dignity;
- fostering equal opportunities and inclusion for all, regardless of family background, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation;
- enhancing economic and social resilience, whether Canadians live in families or on their own.
With these in mind, I will expect you to work with your colleagues through established legislative, regulatory, and Cabinet processes to deliver on your top priorities.
Continue reading “My Mandate Letter for the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development”
Equality of opportunity is a choice
Tony Atkinson, the great British economist, encourages us to think of inequality as a choice, something that can be influenced by public policy.
If this is the case for equality of outcomes, then it is surely also so for equality of opportunity; the significant differences in social mobility between the rich countries hinting at the role governments play in determining the degree to which family background is destiny, the rich raising the next generation of rich adults, the poor seeing their children face low chances of upward mobility.
Some of these differences may simply reflect different social priorities, but others may teach us about the power of different policies. Continue reading “Equality of opportunity is a choice”
Economics for public policy 