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Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Transferring income to families with children has long been a basic Canadian social policy. Though motivated by a range of goals, a central expectation has been that higher family income will lead to better child outcomes, especially in low-income families. This paper presents a synthesis of Canadian research estimating the effect of household income on measures of child development and well-being. While child outcomes and socioeconomic status (SES) are highly correlated, the effect of income on child outcomes, controlling for other SES factors, is found to be statistically significant but of much smaller magnitude than correlation alone indicates. The paper also discusses key theoretical and methodological issues in this area of research, identifies areas for future research, and draws implications for public policy design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper I provide evidence that suggests selective retirement does not bias estimates of wage losses due to displacement. I estimate the magnitude of hourly wage losses faced by workers who are displaced when over the age of 50. I account for the self-selection of older workers into retirement, which prevents observation of some workers' potential wage losses. The results confirm that high tenured older workers face large wage losses following displacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objectives of this paper are (a) to estimate the overall losses to the beef industry in Canada from BSE by identifying and estimating the increased costs and reduced revenues to the industry from May 2003 to September 2007; and (b) to assess the extent to which compensation paid by federal and provincial governments to producers of cattle and beef products covered these losses. The analysis suggests that in aggregate, the industry in Canada was fully indemnified through federal and provincial assistance programs, but the gains or losses to various sectors within the beef industry cannot be identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

How much might poor financial market returns affect the financial well-being of Canadian seniors? We compare three scenarios: if Canadian financial markets (a) never experienced the financial crisis of 2008 (i.e., continued on their pre-2008 path); (b) experienced the crisis and return to historical trends; or (c) enter a new low normal of depressed stock market returns and continued low interest rates. Using a population microsimulation model, we model the first order impacts-that is, before behavioural responses such as delayed retirement or increased savings-on the retirement income flows of Baby Boom retirees. While annual income from private savings of the median Canadian baby-boom senior drops by over half in the event of continuing low financial market returns, median financial welfare drops by only just over a fifth. Rising social transfers and stable income sources (such as Canada/Quebec Pension Plan and implicit income from home ownership) partially shield Canadian seniors from financial market risk. Canadian research has long recognized that the Canadian social pension system protects poorer Canadian seniors from destitution. Our results indicate that it also helps shield the Canadian elderly population as a whole from financial market risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper uses the child sample of Statistics Canada's 2001 Participation and Activity Limitations Survey to study the economic costs of caring for children with disabilities in Canada. Both explicit out-of-pocket expenditures and implicit costs in the form of foregone labour market opportunities are considered. Results indicate that, despite universal health insurance in Canada, a majority of families of children with disabilities incur significant economic costs. Additional financial support might be offered, particularly when the child's condition is severe, and costly therapy and specialized aids could be covered. Our results also support the need for respite as well as help in balancing work and caregiving for Canadian parents of children with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at a further option which thus far appears not to have entered the debate on the long-standing issue of interprovincial barriers. Labelled the subnational World Trade Organization (WTO) approach, it is based on the simple idea of seeking the agreement of the Canadian provinces (and WTO members) to extend existing WTO disciplines to the provincial level. This implies that the principles of Most Favoured Nation and National Treatment, as well as of WTO dispute settlement, would apply directly to interprovincial trade in goods and services through the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and that the framework of the General Agreement on Trade and Services would allow for scheduling of commitments, including on labour mobility under mode 4. The Agreements on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures would also apply, as would all other WTO agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to identify the channels through which specialization in resource-intensive production had an impact on the performance of the aggregate Canadian economy over the 1970-2005 period. As a whole, the Canadian resource sector appears to have been making substantial direct and indirect contributions to aggregate economic performance since 1970, and we can find little evidence of strong or consistent crowding-out effects. There are, however, some important caveats. In particular, the significance of the resource sector's contributions was strongly influenced by the key role played by the energy extraction industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We use longitudinal linked employer-employee data and find that the probability of participating in firm-sponsored classroom training diminishes with age. Although the standard human capital investment model predicts such a decline, we also consider the possibility that the wage and productivity impacts of training decline with age. Taking into account endogenous training decisions, we find that the training wage premium diminishes only slightly with age. However, estimates of the impact of training on productivity decrease dramatically with age, suggesting that incentives for firms to invest in classroom training are much lower for older workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the realized and projected rates of return for contributors to the Canada Pension Plan from 1968 to 2056. For this purpose, a representative agent was constituted. A steady decline in returns was observed in which the rates of return for the first generation of contributors were markedly higher than those of subsequent generations, primarily on the account of modalities for establishing benefits. The higher contribution rates for subsequent generations also played a role in the lower rates of return observed, but this factor is actually not as important as commonly believed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1997 Quebec adopted a policy providing universal pre-school daycare for five dollars per day. Comparing Quebec to the rest of Canada, we use the 1996, 2001, and 2006 Canadian censuses to determine the impact of this policy on couples' strategies for combining employment and child care. As well as increasing female labour force participation, the policy reduced the number of families with a traditional division of labour, showing greater effects on common-law than on married couples. These effects, however, are considerably smaller than are differences related to the two parents' human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada, advocates of universal child-care often point to policies implemented in Quebec as providing a model for early education and care policies in other provinces. While these policies have proven to be highly popular among citizens, initial evaluations of access to these programs indicated they led to a multitude of undesirable child developmental, health, and family outcomes. These research findings ignited substantial controversy and criticism. In this study, we show the robustness of the initial analyses to 1) concerns over whether negative outcomes would vanish over time as suppliers gained experience providing child-care; 2)concerns regarding multiple testing; and 3) concerns that the original estimates measured the causal impact of child-care availability and not child-care attendance. A notable exception is that despite estimated effects stemming from the policy indicating declines in motor-social development scores in Quebec relative to the rest of Canada, our analyses imply that on average attending child-care in Canada leads to a significant increase in this test score. However, our analysis reveals substantial heterogeneity in program impacts that occur in response to the Quebec policies and indicates that most of the negative impacts reported in earlier research are driven by children from families who only attended child-care in response to the implementation of this policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Evictions, as markers of housing instability, call attention to the 'housing affordability crisis.' The purpose of this research was to examine the individual and structural circumstances that contributed to eviction transitions in housing careers across the life course, how housing trajectories spiralled into homelessness, and how the confluence of social policies operated during these transitions. Qualitative interviews indicated that transitions from eviction to homelessness were entangled across the life course and stretched across generations. The study shows how housing policies interact with life-course events and other policies to produce negative and costly effects for the precariously housed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of an additional language may be associated with enhanced earnings because of its actual value in the workplace, or its value as a screen for ability. Previously available data did not indicate whether bilingualism was actually practiced. The 2001 Census reports, for the first time, the primary and secondary languages used at work. Conditioning on both language knowledge and language use determines the additional earnings that can be attributed to the use of a second official language. We find substantial, statistically significant, rewards to second official language use in Quebec and insignificant effects in the Rest-of-Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Responding to increasing health-care costs, deficit financing and the aging of the population, many OECD nations are exploring new cost-efficient health-care models. One such model, designed to manage the home-based health-care system through the application of quasi-market principles has been adopted by the province of Ontario. Findings from a case study of 835 Ontario home-care workers indicate that a market-modelled approach to health-care restructuring may be leading to decreased levels of job satisfaction and a greater propensity to leave among workers in the home-care sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]