EDITORIAL
Remove bricks from welfare wall
Dec 08, 2007 04:30 AM
You would think that taxpayers who foot the bill for welfare would
want the government to do everything in its power to help people on
welfare to break free from the system and become self-sufficient.
Yet in many ways, the government puts a massive wall in the way of
those trying to get off welfare. What that wall consists of is a
tangle of rules and regulations that can leave welfare recipients
worse off if they try to make the transition from welfare to work or
if they try to better themselves by getting an education.
For example, if social assistance recipients work part-time to
supplement their meagre incomes, welfare deducts 50 cents of every
dollar they earn. If they live in public housing, their subsidized
rent goes up 30 cents for every dollar earned. The remaining 20 cents
is not even enough to cover work expenses such as public transit,
child care, clothing and payroll deductions like the Canada Pension
Plan.
When added up, these deductions and extra work-related costs can be
more than 100 per cent of what a person earned.
Last week, Star reporter Laurie Monsebraaten told readers the story
of Zuher Ismail and his mother's efforts to escape poverty and the
barriers Queen's Park has thrown in their way. Ismail lives with his
working mother in a Toronto public housing building. When he took a
part-time job to help pay the cost of his post-secondary education,
his mother's subsidized rent went up by $100 a month. But if he were
to move out to free her from that penalty, he could not earn enough
money to support himself and still pay for his schooling.
That is just one example of the catch-22 situations outlined in a new
report by policy analyst John Stapleton with the fitting title Why is
it so tough to get ahead? How our tangled social programs pathologize
the transition to self-reliance. The study was funded by the
privately endowed Metcalfe Foundation.
The report spells out in detail how government policies and programs
too often work at cross-purposes to punish people trying to improve
their circumstances. Instead of assisting those who want to work,
more often than not these policies discourage work.
And as a result, these misdirected social policies serve only to
perpetuate poverty. By penalizing 18-year-olds such as Ismail who
want to go to school, the rules, in fact, give them plenty of reasons
to drop out.
This is counterproductive, because 18-year-olds should not be
punished for trying to escape the conditions in which they grow up.
Stapleton, who for nearly three decades worked for Ontario's ministry
of social services, says one thing the government could do to
facilitate people's efforts to become more self-reliant is to give
them "time outs," which would act as grace periods on public-housing
rent increases, welfare and child benefit clawbacks and cuts to child-
care subsidies.
For young people like Ismail, Stapleton recommends a grace period of
up to four years so they can live at home, work part-time and pursue
an education without causing more hardship for their families.
The Ontario government has already passed legislation to allow
welfare recipients who take a job to keep their health benefits for
six months to reduce this "welfare wall." Extending that six-month
moratorium to all the other punitive measures that hit newly working
adults is well worth more detailed study by Queen's Park. Stapleton
claims it could be introduced almost overnight and would not be too
costly.
Such changes would only affect an estimated 25,000 welfare families
in the province who find themselves in a position where it is better
for them financially to stay on welfare than go to work or school.
In the longer term, as the province comes up with its promised
poverty reduction strategy, it should work with the federal
government to ensure there are positive incentives for welfare
recipients to find a job or pursue a post-secondary education.
Encouraging people to work and then in effect stripping them of the
financial benefits that come with work makes little sense.
http://www.thestar.com/article/283624
-------------------
Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask]
To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header -- to [log in to unmask]
SIGNOFF SDOH
DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU.
To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header.
SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname
To post a message to all 1200+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask]
Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant.
For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask]
To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask]
SET SDOH DIGEST
To view the SDOH archives, go to: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html
|
