Program Awareness, Administrative Burden, and Non-Take-Up of Québec’s Supplement to the Work Premium

ABSTRACT

Program take-up is a necessary condition for program effectiveness. Yet, non-take-up is a significant challenge for many social programs, including Québec’s Supplement to the Work Premium (SWP), a refundable tax credit targeted toward long-term welfare clients. Based on interviews with 21 public actors and 46 program participants and nonparticipants, this study explains how low program awareness, the low value of the benefit and the significant administrative burden borne by potential and actual participants contribute to the non-take-up of the SWP in this sample. Moreover, four policy implications and recommendations that can inform the design, implementation, and evaluation of social programs, are derived from this study.

KEYWORDS:

• Program take-up
• social policy
• program implementation
• activation
• compliance costs
• social assistance
• welfare
• welfare-to-work

Acknowledgments

We presented a previous version of this article at the annual conference of the Société québécoise de science politique (SQSP), at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Montreal, on May 18 2017. We thank the conference participants as well as Guy Fréchet, Louis Imbeau, Steve Jacob, Justin Lawarée, and Sule Tomkinson for their insightful comments. We also thank Pierrette Brie and Caroline Hamel (support for the administrative process and access to personal data); Félix-Antoine Cloutier, Raphaëlle Jacques, Jérémy Trudel, Milorie Bérubé and Laurie-Anne Garant (interview transcription); Ashley Rhéaume (text editing) as well as all study participants.

Ethics

This research project was approved by Université Laval’s Research Ethics Committee (2015-196/07-10-2015). Access to personal data was authorized by the Québec’s Commission d’accès à l’information (CAI, application 1011327) and the Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale (MTESS). The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Notes

1. Starting in 2018, the eligibility criteria of the SWP has been expanded to include clients who have received last-resort financial assistance for at least 24 of the 30 months immediately preceding the start of the work transition (Ministère des Finances, Nov. 21 2018, C.33).

2. Québec has two main last-resort financial assistance programs: 1) the Social Assistance Program for those who do not have a severely limited capacity for employment; and 2) the Social Solidarity Program for those who have a severely limited capacity for employment. Since 2009, young adults participating in a third (minor) program, the Youth Alternative (Alternative jeunesse), are also eligible for the SWP but the program has not accepted participants since 2014.

3. In that respect, public authorities should also examine whether the medical claim slip is a barrier to claimants who would be eligible to the SWP without this condition.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Insight Development grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), grant number 430-2015-01255.