Longitudinal Analysis of Employment Success Rates of Ontario Income Assistance Clients: An Analysis by Region

ABSTRACT

This research paper addresses how changes in Ontario’s income assistance (IA) funding model affected employment success rates of IA clients over time and between regions. I use a multilevel logistic regression model to analyze variables coded from administrative and census data. The results show that there have been significant decreases in employment success rates across Ontario regions since the 1995 download of social services to municipalities. The discussion addresses key policy implications as a result of this analysis, specifically in favor of a standardized model of social service delivery.

KEYWORDS:

• Ontario works
• municipal government
• employment success
• decentralization
• income assistance

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank Dr. Dave Armstrong for his help with the coding and analysis processes, as well as Dr. Anders Holm, the journal editors and reviewer for their helpful feedback and guidance throughout the publication process. This research was supported by funds to the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and Statistics Canada. Although the research and analysis are based on data from Statistics Canada, the opinions expressed do not represent the views of Statistics Canada. ©This data includes information copied with permission from Canada Post Corporation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For the purposes of this paper, IA and welfare will be used interchangeably throughout to describe short-term last resort financial aid payments.Last resort refers to the exhaustion of all other assets and benefits (employment insurance, worker’s compensation benefits, available cash, and liquid assets).

2. This is not an exhaustive list of criteria, and exceptions to any one of these could be found in the legislation of each province. It is worthy to note that a client may be exempt from the employment plan requirement if there is a demonstrable medical condition (including addiction, which temporarily precludes clients from employment), or if the client faces extenuating circumstances, such as fleeing abuse. The employment-related requirements are not applicable to clients of the ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program).

3. At the time of this report, there was no publicly available data on the exact policy changes, thus they are not included in this paper.

4. To illustrate, the City of Toronto alone had incurred $28 million in costs from ODSP, OW and Ontario Drug Benefits in 2009 (City of Toronto, 2011).

5. Since IA is a provincial benefit, municipalities do not have decision making autonomy with respect to funding or benefits issued to clients.

6. Data collection started at 1992 because prior to that year, all government issued payments IA, EI, Old Age Benefits) were grouped together.

7. There are 49 CDs across Ontario.

8. Census data is publicly available, therefore the data pulled (such as median income) did not breach privacy policies.

9. Low Income Cut Off (LICO) is set by the government of Canada based on family unit and municipality population and are adjusted for inflation over time (Statistics Canada, 2019b).

10. Before-tax data was used to ensure consistency with LICO, which reports Low-Income cutoffs based on before-tax figures.

11. The model initially incorporated participation rate of a region, but the variable was insignificant and thus removed from the model. Furthermore, full time employment would make most IA clients ineligible to receive benefits as the data does not include demographic information of IA clients.

12. Although the decline in the real value of the IA payment over the period may have also meant that the marginally least desperate would no longer bother to apply, leading to a further decline in IA applicant pool employability, there are reasons beyond monetary gain why individuals apply for IA (for example, extended medical coverage or additional funds for work boots or food safe training). IA clients with children are eligible to receive more money (than a single individual) and can sometimes receive federal child payments sooner than waiting for tax season.

13. The attached data Relationship Between Median Income of CMSM and Employment Success at the FSA level is provided for use in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Statistics Canada Open License Agreement hereby attached (https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/reference/license). In addition, you are required to post the following notice whenever content of Relationship Between Median Income of CMSM and Employment Success at the FSA level is published.

14. The attached data Relationship of High School Graduates and Employment Success at the FSA level is provided for use in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Statistics Canada Open License Agreement hereby attached (https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/reference/license). In addition, you are required to post the following notice whenever content of Relationship High School Graduates and Employment Success at the FSA level is published.

15. The attached data Relationship Between CMSM Higher Education and Employment Success (Figures1 and 2) at the FSA level is provided for use in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Statistics Canada Open License Agreement hereby attached (https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/reference/license). In addition, you are required to post the following notice whenever content of Relationship Between CMSM Higher Education and Employment Success at the FSA level is published.

16. The attached data Weighted Intercepts of Employment Success Rate by Region at the FSA level is provided for use in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Statistics Canada Open License Agreement hereby attached (https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/reference/license). In addition, you are required to post the following notice whenever content of Weighted Intercepts of Employment Success at the FSA level is published.