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International students in Canada make enormous contribution to the Canadian economy. As domestic students' enrolment has declined, international students' admissions have compensated for economic losses that Canadian universities incur from the decline of domestic students' enrolment. The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting international students' admissions to Canadian universities. Drawing on various secondary data sources, this article argues that international students in Canada are vulnerable due to their temporary immigration status. They are excluded from most governments' relief programs aimed at supporting Canadians during this pandemic. Most international students experience psychological and financial difficulties amid the pandemic. The situation is triggering a further decline in international students' admission, creating economic implications for Canadian universities. By exploring the challenges facing international students and the strategies required to strengthen international students' resilience and universities' capacities, the paper contributes to our understanding of the plights of international students and educational institutions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

University students today are preparing for a more precarious future than previous generations, and the global pandemic has exacerbated their sense of insecurity and vulnerability. Drawing on data from a longitudinal study of undergraduate students at a large Canadian university, this paper examines the narratives of working students, before and since the pandemic lockdowns began in early 2020. Narratives focus on students' attempts to handle the diverse rhythms of multiple activities, and how they respond to precariousness in work, family, and academic studies. Findings illustrate intractable tensions within higher education between logics of competition and care, and between access and selectivity. Further, universities, as well as employers, can be seen to contribute to the precarity of students, and to a 'crisis of care' in society more generally. Our analysis suggests the need for a more expansive and generous vision for higher education, which recognizes and supports students in their diversity.

This paper reports on food insecurity among students attending a university in rural Nova Scotia. In 2015, 1,030 students completed an online, 38-item cross-sectional survey. The results report that 38.1% of students experienced food insecurity during the previous 12 months. Food insecurity was statistically associated with living arrangements, source of funds for schooling, meal plans, and year of study. Poor overall health, poor mental health, high stress, and poor academic performance were significantly higher for food-insecure students. Students employed multiple coping strategies, with implications for academic success and long-term debt. Qualitative analysis revealed four themes related to insufficient money for food: inability to cover basic needs, health-related outcomes of persistent worry, loss of time from learning, and impacts on social life. This research demonstrates the need to re-evaluate funding policies for post-secondary education in Canada to ensure students can afford the costs of basic needs and educational costs.

Internationalisation is the inclusion of international, intercultural and global dimensions into the objectives, policies and practices in the delivery of postsecondary education. The objective of the research was to investigate the types of partnerships and internationalisation approaches that exist in higher education, the motives of internationalisation and the most appropriate approaches to measuring the quality and progress of internationalisation in higher education. A number of studies on internationalisation have been carried out. However, there is a limit on the scale and amount of research undertaken on measuring the output of internationalisation in higher education, in particular in the context of the Canadian higher education system. This paper is based on case study research to determine the motives of internationalisation in higher education in a Canadian university and it uses the Knight Internationalisation Tracking Measure to test the quality and progress of internationalisation in the university. The research entailed document analysis, interviews and surveys which were designed to gather data on internationalisation practices and objectives from university staff involved in the management of internationalisation and international partnerships. The content of the interviews and surveys were based on the measures defined by the Knight Internationalisation Tracking Measure. The research found that higher education institutions are motivated by the prospects of attracting additional income to make-up for the reduction in government funding. In addition, internationalisation offers access to staff development opportunities, internationalisation of the curriculum, and wider benefits leading to societal development. These findings and recommendations are drawn from a single case study.

In this paper, we employ a comparative life course approach for Canada and Germany to unravel the relationships among general and vocational educational attainment and different life course activities, with a focus on labour market and income inequality by gender. Life course theory and related concepts of 'time,' 'normative patterns,' 'order and disorder,' and 'discontinuities' are used to inform the analyses. Data from the "Paths on Life's Way" (Paths) project in British Columbia, Canada and the German "Pathways from Late Childhood to Adulthood (LifE)" which span 28 and 33 years, respectively, are employed to examine life trajectories from leaving school to around age 45. Sequence analysis and cluster analyses portray both within and between country differences -- and in particular gender differences -- in educational attainment, employment, and other activities across the life course which has an impact on ultimate labour market participation and income levels. 'Normative' life courses that follow a traditional order correspond with higher levels of full-time work and higher incomes; in Germany more so than Canada, these clusters are male dominated. Clusters characterised by 'disordered' and 'discontinuous' life courses in both countries are female dominated and associated with lower income levels.

In a recent paper, Reardon found that the relationship between family income and children's academic achievement grew substantially stronger in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. We provide an international context for these results by examining the income-achievement association in 19 other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries using data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Programme for International Student Assessment. First, we calculate and compare the magnitude of "income achievement gaps" across this sample of countries. Second, we investigate the association between the size of a country's income achievement gap, its income inequality, and a variety of other country characteristics. We find considerable variation across countries in income achievement gaps. Moreover, the U.S. income achievement gap is quite large in comparison to this sample of countries. Our multivariate analyses show that the income achievement gap is positively associated with educational differentiation, modestly negatively associated with curricular standardization, and positively associated with national levels of poverty and inequality.

This paper analyses the returns to education of specific occupations in Canada. The purpose is to scrutinize whether and in how far academic and vocational education do differ in monetary benefits regarding individual returns. Therefore, two different methodologies of calculation are used to compute the concrete returns to education. As a result it is shown empirically that within the here selected occupational groups (e.g. librarians and electricians) there is no decisive earnings benefit regarding academic careers, although a positive correlation of income level and educational achievement can be verified. Our findings justify revisiting the underlying assumption that vocational education and training cannot generate benefits comparable with those generated by higher education. The earnings data suggest that monetary aspects may be less crucial than generally assumed to the reputation and perceived value of vocational education and training. Therefore, social status and prestige seem to be the most significant contributory factors to vocational training's low status in Canada.

This paper replicates the work of Giles and Drewes from the 1990s. They showed a catch-up effect whereby graduates of liberal arts undergraduate programs, although at an early-career disadvantage compared with graduates of applied programs, had higher incomes by mid-career. Working with the Panel 5 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (2005-2010), the catch-up no longer exists.

Background: In high income countries one in five children still lives in poverty, which is known to adversely shape the life course health trajectory of these children. However, much less is understood on whether social and fiscal policies have the capacity to reverse this damage, which intervention is likely to be most effective and when these interventions should be delivered to maximise their impact. This systematic review attempts to address these questions by looking at the impact of income-support interventions, delivered during the first 1,000 days of life, on cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory and mental health outcomes. Methods: The review was restricted to experimental or quasi experimental studies conducted in high income countries. Studies were retrieved from multidisciplinary databases as well as health, economic, social sciences-specific literature browsers. All papers retrieved through the search strategy were double screened at title, abstract and full text stage. Relevant data of the selected studies were extracted and collected in tables, then summarised via narrative synthesis approach. Robustness of findings was assessed by tabulating impact by health outcome, type of intervention and study design. Results: Overall, 16 relevant papers were identified, including 15 quasi-experimental studies and one randomized control trial (RCT). Income-support interventions included were unconditional/conditional cash transfers, income tax credit and minimum wage salary policies. Most studies were conducted in United States and Canada. Overall, the evidence suggested limited effect on mental health indicators but a positive, albeit small, effect of most policies on birth weight outcomes. Despite this, according to few studies that tried to extrapolate the results into public health terms, the potential number of negative outcomes averted might be consistent. Conclusions: Income-support interventions can positively affect some of the health outcomes of interest in this review, including birth weight and mental health. Given the large number of people targeted by these programs, one could infer that – despite small – the observed effect may be still relevant at population level. Nonetheless, the limited generalisability of the evidence gathered hampers firm conclusions. For the future, the breadth and scope of this literature need to be broadened to fully exploit the potential of these interventions and understand how their public health impact can be maximised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'learning city' contains a range of non-formal learning economies. In recent years researchers have focused on, what has been termed, the non-formal arts learning sector, to document best practices, the emergence of new literacies and/or cultural practices, and to highlight interventions that support otherwise marginalised and underserved communities. Yet, for all of this attention, the non-formal learning sector has remained an opaque object, defined by hazy boundaries, diverse programme structures, and a presence in cities that is difficult to grasp. In this paper we develop an account of the non-formal arts learning sector for socially disadvantaged youth by treating it as a 'socio-technical assemblage' of the learning city. We draw on data from the "Youthsites" research project and examine the history, priorities, and tensions in the sector between 1995 and 2015, a period when the youth arts sector has become a significant feature of urban space. We trace the emergence of the sector in three global cities, analyse a series of paradoxes linked to income and property, the labelling of youth, and organisation aims, and show how these paradoxes shape the sector's broader relationship with the state, labour and consumer markets, and related institutions that allocate support for young people.

In this paper we examine the ultimatum game's income distribution and efficiency implications and modify the game to investigate the impact of re-distributional policies imposed on the parties.

In a period of student loan scandals and U.S. financial market instability impacting on the cost and availability of student loans, this paper looks at alternative models of higher education funding. In this context, it also considers the level of financial support that the government should provide to higher education.

Ample evidence indicates that a person's human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the estimated returns can be causally interpreted. Using the PIAAC Survey of Adult Skills, this paper explores several approaches that aim to address potential threats to causal identification of returns to skills, in terms of both higher wages and better employment chances. We address measurement error by exploiting the fact that PIAAC measures skills in several domains. Furthermore, we estimate instrumental-variable models that use skill variation stemming from school attainment and parental education to circumvent reverse causation. Results show a strikingly similar pattern across the diverse set of countries in our sample. In fact, the instrumental-variable estimates are consistently larger than those found in standard least-squares estimations. The same is true in two "natural experiments," one of which exploits variation in skills from changes in compulsory-schooling laws across U.S. states. The other one identifies technologically induced variation in broadband Internet availability that gives rise to variation in ICT skills across German municipalities. Together, the results suggest that least-squares estimates may provide a lower bound of the true returns to skills in the labor market.

This paper uses panel data for Canada from 1976 to 2018, across 10 provinces, to reassess the relationship between mortality rates and economic fluctuations. The key contribution of our paper lies in examining the extent to which this relationship is driven by the employment rate (extensive margin) versus average hours worked (intensive margin). We find evidence of procyclical mortality for females at the aggregate level; aggregate male mortality remains largely unaffected by economic fluctuations. Our findings also reveal temporal heterogeneity, as the extensive margin becomes the driving force for female mortality rates during the more recent period (1990 onwards). These findings remain robust when accounting for personal income and pollution. Finally, we find some support for a procyclical relationship for individuals in the working age groups, while mortality exhibits a countercyclical pattern for children (age 0 to 14) and the elderly (age 65 and above). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticizes the paper of professor McInnis concerning the income of people in the Canadian regions. Materials used on the study; Justification made on the statistical method used; Claims of McInnis concerning the income of industrial nations.

This paper examines perceptions of quality of life in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada from the perspective of residents and key community stakeholders. A series of eight focus groups were conducted. Six sessions were held with residents of neighbourhood "hubs", areas characterized by high levels of poverty. The following themes were highlighted as significant to neighbourhood quality of life: (1) housing quality and affordability; (2) diversity and cultural integration; (3) crime and safety; (4) community engagement and recreation; (5) green space and the physical environment; and (6) transportation. Two focus groups were then conducted with key informants who provided recommendations for improving quality of life and discussed relevant policy issues such as employment and income security. The findings of the focus groups resonate with local research and policy action in Hamilton, including a new Neighbourhood Development Strategy for the City. This research advocates for decision-makers to support and work alongside context-based, resident-led community development efforts. The hub model, as well as Hamilton's broader neighbourhood-based research and community development approach may assist social researchers, civic leaders and various levels of government across Canada as they work to improve quality of life in their communities.

Human capital theorists perceive of educational expansion as beneficial to individuals, corporations and national economies, while social closure theorists have claimed that inflation of credential requirements maintains traditional status inequalities. In this paper I argue that status inequalities are not only maintained by credential inflation, but also the inflation of extra-credential experiences. As undergraduate degrees become more common, access to employment and further education opportunities increasingly depend on extra-curricular and "enriching" educational experiences. Using qualitative data from a longitudinal study of working-class university students in Canada, I will address the mechanisms by which they have gained or were denied access to such experiences. The data suggest that working-class students' relative lack of financial resources and social networks are barriers to the development of extra-credential experiences, which in turn leads to the change of educational and career plans for some. (Contains 2 notes.)

Media advocacy is a well-established strategy for transmitting health messages to the public. This paper discusses a media advocacy intervention that raised issues about how the public interprets messages about the negative effects of poverty on population health. In conjunction with the publication of a manuscript illustrating how income-related food insecurity leads to disparities related to the consumption of a popular food product across Canada (namely, Kraft Dinner[R]), we launched a media intervention intended to appeal to radio, television, print and Internet journalists. All the media coverage conveyed our intended message that food insecurity is a serious population health problem, confirming that message framing, personal narratives and visual imagery are important in persuading media outlets to carry stories about poverty as a determinant of population health. Among politicians and members of the public (through on-line discussions), the coverage provoked on-message as well as off-message reactions. Population health researchers and health promotion practitioners should anticipate mixed reactions to media advocacy interventions, particularly in light of new Internet technologies. Opposition to media stories regarding the socio-economic determinants of population health can provide new insights into how we might overcome challenges in translating evidence into preventive interventions. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper examines linkages between women's experiences in accessing information, services and public policy relating to income support in Canada and the UK. Drawing on narrative interviews, the author finds mothers with disabilities are often embedded in complex relations of care, experiencing both embodied and social barriers. Additionally, by employing critical discourse analysis, it is clear that policy in both contexts is written not only inaccessibly and confusingly, but is directed toward an able-bodied, independent, resource-rich ideal citizen. Thus, policy in both contexts is disabling and pathologizing. There are differences in resources that are written into the policy and available through the UK network of Citizen's Advice Bureaus that would indicate that the UK offers a breadth of services and avenues for advocacy that are unavailable in Canada. Further, the Canadian policy appears to be more adversarial and surveillance-based than the UK policy. (Contains 3 notes.)

Poverty is generally defined as income or expenditure insufficiency, but the economic condition of a household also depends on its real and financial asset holdings. This paper investigates measures of poverty that rely on indicators of household net worth. We review and assess two main approaches followed in the literature: income-net worth measures and asset-poverty. We provide fresh cross-national evidence based on data from the Luxembourg Wealth Study. (Contains 3 figures, 6 tables, and 16 footnotes.)

Adolescent gambling is a major social problem in North America. Over the years this problem has given rise to a number of theoretical explanations. This paper argues that the existing explanations of youth gambling underestimate the influence of broader structural forces conducive to youth gambling problem and, instead, provide micro analyses that often blames individuals for their gambling problems. As such, these theories produce incomplete pictures of a persistent, cohesive and growing problem. Canadian youth's gambling problem is said to be better understood within the nexus of: (1) the Canadian state's pro-gambling policies due to the need for revenues, (2) the discrepancy between widely shared Canadian cultural values-wealth, power, and success-and legitimate means of achieving them, and (3) the capitalist processes of profit making and commodification.

New postsecondary graduates seeking entry into the Canadian workforce may experience more favourable labour market outcomes if they augment their education with job-related training. Employers, looking for new ways of differentiating among equally credentialed prospects, may prefer job candidates with practical training. These new realities have led to a steady increase in the availability and popularity of cooperative education programmes in Canadian colleges and universities. Few existing studies, however, have sought to examine whether or not earnings premiums or employment advantages exist for coop graduates. This paper compares the earnings and employment outcomes of postsecondary graduates with coop credentials to those with traditional, non-coop credentials. Even once controlling for a number of factors, coop programmes provide the greatest advantage at the university level, particularly among male graduates. In terms of employment status, college males and university females experienced the greatest advantages to attending coop programmes. (Contains 3 tables, 6 figures and 17 notes.)

The focus of this paper is on a microeconomic analysis of the annual transition rate from temporary to permanent work of individual workers in Canada for the period 1999-2004. Given that a large proportion of temporary employment is involuntary, an understanding of the factors associated with the transition to permanent work may inform public policy. Factors associated with the transition, namely, human capital, household structures and labour market segmentation are analyzed using data from the Statistics Canada's "Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics" (SLID) for the period 1999-2004, limited to paid workers aged 20-64 years, excluding students. Among the key factors associated with the transitions are younger age and low unemployment rates. The analysis adds to the Canadian and international literature on transitions from temporary to permanent work.

In this paper we hypothesize that farmers with a stronger valuation of family farming will be more resistant to converting farmland to tree plantations. Our survey data analysis from 106 farmers in northern Alberta reveals that general opposition to trees on farmland is the strongest predictor of farmers' resistance to the establishment of poplar tree plantations on privately-owned land. Valuation of family farming is the strongest determinant of resistance to trees on farmland. Among the potential intervening variables influencing support for tree plantations, including county, age, gender, number of children, and percent of income from farming, number of children and percent of income from farming had significant direct effects on valuation of family farming. This study suggests that economic incentives alone are unlikely to influence farmers' willingness to convert their land to non-traditional uses, and that intergenerational transfer of land, and its relationship to valuation of family farming, deserves further attention in rural sociological scholarship. (Contains 3 figures, 4 tables, and 5 footnotes.)

This paper reports on a 2004 follow-up study conducted in partnership with the University of Manitoba Continuing Education Division and local senior's organizations. The partnership was formed in 2002-03 to promote applied research on lifelong learning and older adults, develop new and complement existing educational activities, and explore new program models and instructional methods to meet the educational needs of retirees. The partnership involved the development of a number of activities: University in May started in 2002, a mini medical series began in 2003, and a survey was completed in 2003 to identify the learning interests, motivations, and barriers among active older adults who participate in learning activities. The 2004 follow-up study compared barriers to participation, learning interests, and motivation to those of a similar population of older adults who held membership with the organizations but had not participated in educational activities for the past two years. The results indicate that the non-active respondents are older, less healthy, less active, less educated, and have lower incomes. Time and motivation to participate may be affected by their socioeconomic standing, health, and sense of well being; that is, their perception of their social reality. Further study to explore the definition of barriers to participation and life long learning for older adults is warranted. Recommendations for program models to facilitate participation in educational opportunities should also be explored. (Contains 11 tables.)

In September 2005, the Toronto-based Task Force on Modernizing Income Security for Working Age Adults (MISWAA) examined Canada's income security system and presented proposals to improve the economic security of low-income, working-age adults. Former youth in care, with their poor outcomes and limited prospects for self-sufficiency as they progress through adulthood, are a small but important part of this population. In Canada, provincial and territorial governments have the jurisdictional responsibility for child welfare. In all provinces and territories, this responsibility ends when the youth reaches the age of majority, generally eighteen. Youth in care may receive extended services past age eighteen, subject to certain requirements. This article examines recent Canadian, American, and international research on what happens to youth who age out of the child welfare system. The findings show a consistently disturbing pattern of poor outcomes for youth leaving foster care. The article describes what governments should do to promote more successful transition and to improve the outcomes for youth as they leave the child welfare system for independent living. (Contains 1 table and 17 notes.) [This document is a summary of a 2005 briefing paper prepared for the Toronto-based Task Force on Modernizing Income Security for Working Age Adults. Funding was provided by the Laidlaw Foundation.]

This paper reports on a study of four major Canadian universities' strategies for generating revenue in the face of prolonged cutbacks. The universities are placed on a continuum of higher education funding, institutional types and organisational attributes. The study produced new hypotheses about how universities' organisational attributes change as a result of the need to generate revenue.

The article focuses on the Canadian taxation of capital gains. A Canadian taxpayer must include one-half of capital gains in taxable income, with the taxable portion taxed at the same rates as ordinary income. For the most part, realization and recognition rules are the same as under the U.S. income tax, with the important exception that both transfers at death and inter vivos gifts are taxable events. A gain on the disposition of the taxpayer's principal residence ordinarily is exempt from tax. The law also allows a taxpayer to exclude, on a cumulative lifetime basis, $500,000 of gain realized on the disposition of qualified farm property or qualified small business corporation shares. This is accomplished through a $250,000 capital gains deduction, which offsets the one-half of $500,000 of qualified gain, which otherwise would be subject to tax.

In the context of declining government subsidization of agriculture, many analysts have predicted reversals in certain characteristic trends of post-1945 Western agriculture with positive implications for agroecosystem well-being. One example, investigated herein, is the suggestion that, in the absence of government safety nets, farmers will seek to diversify their operations in order to buffer against production failures or market downturns in any one output. Such a shift is not only consistent with agricultural risk-management theory, but also, at first glance, early "mirror image" conceptualizations of post-productivist agriculture; if (output) specialization has been an observed trend of productivism, then (output) diversification should be the trend of post-productivism. In fairness, however, where diversification has been identified as a manifestation of post-productivism, it has usually implied the development of largely non-agricultural activities that supplement household income. Clearly, a clarification of meaning is needed, and this paper offers some suggestions for doing so. Additionally, crop data from Saskatchewan, Canada are analysed for the years 1994-2000 to determine the degree to which arable producers there have sought to diversify their operations following the loss of an historically and financially significant export subsidy. Given limited evidence of diversification at the level of individual farms, the maximum scale at which crop diversity has any significance in ecological terms, a discussion follows of the various limitations to adopting an output diversification strategy to manage market and other risks, and the likelihood of farmers further pursuing output specialization in an era of reduced government support and increasingly chaotic commodity markets.

While adults from all socio-economic status (SES) levels generally encounter a decline in health as they grow older, research shows that health status is tied to SES at all stages of life. The dynamics of the relationship between SES and health over the life course of adult Canadians, however, remain largely unexplored. This paper tests the divergence hypothesis, which postulates that the SES-based gap in health widens with age, using a representative sample of Canadians aged 25 to 79 from the 1994-1995 National Population Health Survey. Multiple linear regression analyses show support for this assumption; that is, the relationship between SES (measured by years of education and annual household income) and health (measured by self-rated and functional health indexes) strengthens with age. The results of this study provide insight into and answers about healthy aging among Canadians.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced marketers to adjust to different consumer responses the world over. Country responses have ranged from complete lockdowns to informal guidelines on avoiding infection. Limiting physical interactions through social distancing is key to mitigating health risks. Yet, some mitigating behaviours such as home delivery versus going to the supermarket come with a higher financial cost. A survey of American and Canadian consumers examined relationships among income, financial strain, and risky social distancing behaviours. Regression analyses found that financial strain had a stronger effect on the incidence of risky behaviours than did income. These relationships were found in the USA but not in Canada. The paper discusses the results and presents the implications for international marketers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use intersectionality-based policy analysis (IBPA) to examine how COVID-19 income support policies enacted in Ontario, Canada, affected people living with poverty. We find that the privileging of formal labor market attachment in eligibility requirements systemically excluded constituencies most likely to be living with poverty. More broadly, these exclusions represent a retrenchment of neoliberal logics in social policy, and the rejection of universal social welfare programs. In conclusion, we suggest that the experiences of people living with poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic further highlight the need for comprehensive social welfare programs, including a universal basic income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces papers published within the issue, including one on regional differences in wage inequality in Canada, another on consumption and income inequality patterns in Canada from 1997 to 2009 and a paper on provincial variation in marginal tax rates affecting the top earners.

Rural communities often have fewer resources and supports to cultivate recreation participation, making participation in recreation less accessible for citizens with low incomes. Such barriers highlight the important role rural recreation practitioners have in terms of developing and delivering access provisions for these citizens. The objectives of this study are as follows: 1) explore the access provisions recreation practitioners design and deliver to rural citizens with low incomes, and 2) discuss the implications of the access provisions in relation to the rural context and citizens with low incomes' participation in recreation. This paper focuses on research conducted in 2019-2020 in Atlantic Canada. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 16 municipal recreation practitioners. Through the social ecological framework, the results revealed three access provisions designed for and delivered to rural citizens with low incomes: 1) one-on-one support for programmatic processes; 2) flexibility with financial policies and programs; and 3) building reach, relevancy, and capacity: the role of community partnerships. Based on these findings, this study addresses the benefits of these provisions in terms of supporting access to recreation for citizens with low incomes residing in rural communities. Considering the rural landscape, we recommend access provisions in rural communities encompass more personal, flexible, and community approaches to support access to recreation for citizens of limited financial means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this discussion paper is to explore how nurses can be strategically poised to advocate for needed policy change in support of greater income equality and other social determinants of health. We adapted Bronfenbrenner's social‐ecological model to highlight how four broad pervasive subsystems shape the opportunities that nurses have to engage in advocacy at the policy level. These subsystems include organizations (the microsystem), professional bodies (the mesosystem), public policies (the exosystem), and societal values (the macrosystem). On the basis of this adapted model, we recommend changes among modifiable elements of the microsystem and mesosystem that can help position nurses (ecologically and collectively) to advocate for public policy change and use examples from a Canadian context to illustrate these points. We believe that the ideas arising from this model can be widely used where policy action on the social determinants of health is needed to inform, guide, and frame change efforts and advocacy work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the health professions, altruism is a foundational value upon which professional privilege is built. This imperative towards self-sacrifice for the benefit of others is a key component of what it means to be professional. This paper explores how altruism operates as a coded mechanism of exclusion and oppression for disabled health professionals. Analysis is based on interviews with fifteen Canadian disabled healthcare professionals in medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, and social work about their experiences of inclusion and exclusion. Themes including the disproportionate sacrifice of time, resources, and income emerged, as did the need to manage political disclosure, often embodying the role of the 'super-crip' with patients/clients and colleagues so as to maintain others' faith in their professional competence and their professional privilege. Further discussion includes questions of how to 'crip' altruism as a professional value and the role of altruism as an ableist force within the health professions. Altruism, the idea of helping others even at cost to oneself, is an important value for health professionals. Disabled health professionals sacrifice more than non-disabled healthcare professionals to meet this obligation. Disabled healthcare professionals may work without accommodations, putting in extra time and effort to prove their altruism. Disabled healthcare professionals experience that disclosing disability may mean their colleagues will treat them as patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic freedom is robustly associated with income growth, but does this association extend to the poorest in a society? In this paper, we employ Canada's longitudinal cohorts of income mobility between 1982 and 2018 to answer this question. We find that economic freedom, as measured by the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of North America (EFNA) index, is positively associated with multiple measures of income mobility for people in the lowest income deciles, including (a) absolute income gain; (b) the percentage of people with rising income; and (c) average decile mobility. For the overall population, economic freedom has weaker effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's universal health-care system does not include dental care, which presents problems for both low- and middle-income families. According to the latest Statistics Canada data, out-of-pocket dental expenses are increasing steadily. Lower-income workers struggle with a disproportionate share of these costs, leading one in 4.5 Canadians to avoid visits to the dentist. With dental care becoming increasingly unaffordable and private insurance harder to obtain, it's time for Canada to consider bringing dental services into the public health system. Policy solutions have tended to fluctuate between a fill-in-the-gaps approach or comprehensive restructuring of dental care. This paper examines two new options: universal first-dollar coverage or denticare, and public dental insurance for all those without it or denticaid. Denticare would cover dental treatment with the same eligibility for public health insurance under the medicare system. Denticaid would only provide this to children under 12 and those lacking private insurance. Both denticare and denticaid would lower overall health-care costs, as improved oral hygiene would reduce rates of chronic and serious diseases. Integrating dentistry into the public health system would lead to increased patient contact, more efficient early screening and referrals. Direct clinical costs are estimated through micro-costing of expected annual dental services used. Indirect administrative costs are estimated through average costing based on existing per-patient administrative costs in the Canadian health-care system. Co-payments for both options are based on five household income brackets with the lowest bracket being exempt and the highest paying the maximum rate. The co-payment for advanced procedures would be 50 per cent and 20 per cent for all other services. Everyone over age 17 would have to pay an annual premium to be enrolled in the public plan; the lowest income brackets would be exempt and the highest would pay the maximum of $400. In denticare, public employees would no longer receive workplace dental benefits on the private market, while those same benefits would make them ineligible for denticaid. National clinical costs for a hypothetical denticare program in 2019, including administrative costs, are estimated at $27.50 billion ($737.09 per capita) with an upper estimate of $38.40 billion ($1,029.18 per capita) and a low estimate of $15.50 billion ($415.46 per capita). In all three scenarios, premiums paid by eligible individuals would generate $8.93 billion in annual revenues. After factoring in premiums, co-payments and the replacement of existing dental expenditures, the program's net cost would be $6.01 billion in 2019, with an upper estimate of $15.09 billion and a lower estimate of negative $3.82 billion. Denticaid's costs, including administrative costs, would be $15.09 billion ($404.49 per capita) in 2019, with a high scenario of $21.32 billion ($571.34 per capita) and a low scenario of $8.39 billion ($224.98 per capita). Denticaid's premiums would generate less revenue to offset costs. The program's net costs are estimated at $$7.47 billion in 2019, with a high estimate of $12.85 billion and a low estimate of $1.79 billion. There are additional challenges to consider, including dental office staffing levels in rural areas, dentists' operating costs and orthodontic treatments. But none of this should prevent Canada from committing to a denticare program, which out-performs denticaid in terms of efficiency. Both federal and provincial governments would need to be involved in the necessary modifications to the Canada Health Act, with decisions on premiums and co-pays left to individual provinces. After those offsets, the remaining taxbased costs would be a relatively small increase in Canada's public health spending and millions of Canadians would get access to good oral health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research on rural depopulation and urbanization to large cities has dominated the literature for decades, small city growth has been largely ignored. Yet, small cities are important to the regional systems in which they are located, including serving as centres to their rural surround. This paper is concerned about growth and change in small cities. Using Brandon, Manitoba as an example, citizen perceptions of a range of specific aspects of city growth are analyzed. The study is based on a household postal survey conducted in May and June 2010 in which 2,500 randomly selected households in Brandon, Manitoba received questionnaires. The results are based on the 518 useable, completed questionnaires that were returned. Differences in perceptions of the pace of change in a range of aspects of development were found based on income, age, educational attainment, employment status, and home ownership. No differences were found based on gender. The paper concludes with comments about how city governments need to be aware of citizen perceptions when pursuing and managing development. The paper also illustrated the importance of citizen perceptions in understanding the pace and direction of change in small cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of consolidated Canadian micro data on household balance sheets and expenditures has been an important impediment to empirical research into real-financial linkages in the Canadian household sector. My paper attempts to fill this data gap by merging household balance sheet data from the Canadian Financial Monitor survey with household expenditure data from the Canadian Survey of Household Spending. The merge process uses a categorical matching framework aimed at preserving the heterogeneity in the underlying datasets. The resulting combined dataset is a novel source of Canadian micro data on household finances and spending patterns covering the period from 1999 to 2005, with roughly 11,000 observations (households) for each year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No significant convergence between Canadian and American income per capita occurred during the first ninety years of the twentieth century. This lack of convergence does not appear to have been due to technological dependence, input price distortions, or diseconomies of scale within the Canadian manufacturing sector. The evidence presented in this paper is based on total factor productivity measurement, statistical testing, and counterfactual experimentation using data from national statistical agencies and firm-level sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Students from low‐income backgrounds (LIB) have been under‐represented in Canadian medical schools for over fifty years. Despite our awareness of this problem, little is known about the experiences of aspiring physicians from LIB in Canada who are working towards medical school admission. Consequently, we have little insight into the barriers and facilitators that may be used to increase the representation of students from LIB in Canadian medical schools. Methods: This paper describes a qualitative description interview study aimed at understanding the experiences of aspiring physicians from LIB as they attempt to gain entry to medical school. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with 21 participants at different stages of their undergraduate, master's, and non‐medical professional education, and used the theories of intersectionality and identity capital as a theoretical framework for identifying barriers and facilitators to a career in medicine. Results: Participants experienced social, identity‐related, economic, structural and informational barriers to a career in medicine. Intrinsic facilitators included motivation, self‐confidence, attitude, strategy, information‐seeking and sorting, and financial literacy and increasing income. Extrinsic facilitators were social, informational, financial and institutional in nature. Conclusion: This study fills existing knowledge gaps in the literature by identifying the pre‐admissions barriers and facilitators encountered by aspiring physicians from LIB in Canada. The barriers and facilitators outlined in this study offer a framework for identifying target areas in developing support for admitting medical students from LIB. Given that medical students from LIB are more likely to serve underserved populations, our study is relevant to Canadian medical schools' social accountability commitment to producing physicians that meet the health needs of marginalised and vulnerable patients. Out of concern for socioeconomic diversity, the authors apply an intersectional approach to examine the barriers and facilitators faced by aspiring physicians from low‐income backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research in Hamilton, Ontario has found that age and longevity of residence are positively associated with evaluations of sense of place (SoP); further, evaluations of SoP between immigrants and Canadian-born individuals have shown no clear pattern (Williams et al. ; Williams and Kitchen ). This paper builds on this work by further examining evaluations of SoP among both immigrants and Canadian-born residents and across gender in Hamilton, while expanding the study to two other small-to-medium sized cities: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. This paper has two objectives: (1) to establish measures of SoP across immigrant status and gender in Hamilton, Saskatoon, and Charlottetown; and, (2) to determine how SoP varies according to immigrant status, length of residence in Canada, age, income, and neighbourhood length of residence across the three city sites. Telephone survey data (n = 1,132) was used to compare evaluations of SoP across various groups and to construct an ordered logistic regression model for SoP. Results suggest that immigrants tended to rate their SoP lower than their Canadian-born counterparts. Hamilton residents were found to rate their SoP lowest, followed by Saskatoon residents and, finally, Charlottetown residents. Younger individuals, those with lower income levels, and those with shorter neighbourhood residency in the cities concerned were more likely to have lower evaluations of SoP. This research suggests that greater attention is needed to nurture immigrants' connection with their new home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a rationale for a comprehensive measure of income and provides illustrative calculations within the Canadian System of National Accounts for making adjustments to net worth for price changes. The paper notes that the System of National Accounts is designed to provide a number of individual aggregates measuring total production, income, savings and net worth. There is no single overall comprehensive measure which reflects the combined effect of changes in income and wealth. Such a measure is of particular importance in periods of rapid or extensive price changes which affect not only purchasing power of income but also the value of assets held and liabilities outstanding with consequences on net worth positions. This paper explores these issues and develops techniques for measuring the effects of specific and overall price changes with respect to net worth of the various sectors in the economy, illustrated with data from the integrated Canadian System of National Accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Participation in on-the-land programs that encourage traditional cultural activities may improve health and well-being. The Income Security Program (ISP) - a financial incentive-based on-the-land program - for Eeyouch (Cree) hunters and trappers in Eeyou Istchee was created as a result of the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement to help mitigate the effects of hydroelectric development on the Cree people of northern Quebec, Canada. Beyond the ISP's financial incentives, little is known about the health measures of those who are eligible to participate in the ISP (i.e. spent ≥120 days on-the-land during the previous year). Therefore, this paper's objective was to assess the health measures of northern Quebec Cree, who were eligible for participation in the ISP.Methods: Using participant data (n = 545) compiled from the Nituuchischaayihtitaau Aschii Multi-Community Environment-and-Health Study, we assessed 13 different health measures in generalized linear models with the independent variable being the eligibility to participate in the ISP.Results: Participants in the present study who were eligible for the ISP had significantly higher levels of vigorous and moderate activity per week, and higher concentrations of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in the blood compared to those ineligible for the ISP (i.e. spent ≤119 days on-the-land during the previous year). Encouragingly, following model adjustment for age and sex, participants eligible for the ISP did not have higher blood concentrations of mercury than those who were not eligible for the ISP.Conclusions: Our results suggest that the participants eligible for participation in the ISP are likely to be healthier than those who are ineligible to participate - and are promising for on-the-land programs for Indigenous peoples beyond a financial incentive - with no apparent higher risk of increasing contaminant body burden through traditional on-the-land-activities (e.g. fish consumption). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we employ a comparative life course approach for Canada and Germany to unravel the relationships among general and vocational educational attainment and different life course activities, with a focus on labour market and income inequality by gender. Life course theory and related concepts of 'time,' 'normative patterns,' 'order and disorder,' and 'discontinuities' are used to inform the analyses. Data from the Paths on Life's Way (Paths) project in British Columbia, Canada and the German Pathways from Late Childhood to Adulthood (LifE) which span 28 and 33 years, respectively, are employed to examine life trajectories from leaving school to around age 45. Sequence analysis and cluster analyses portray both within and between country differences – and in particular gender differences – in educational attainment, employment, and other activities across the life course which has an impact on ultimate labour market participation and income levels. 'Normative' life courses that follow a traditional order correspond with higher levels of full-time work and higher incomes; in Germany more so than Canada, these clusters are male dominated. Clusters characterised by 'disordered' and 'discontinuous' life courses in both countries are female dominated and associated with lower income levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals accept additional paid work, in terms of salary increase or more hours, with the expectation they will be financially better off than before. Unfortunately, for recipients of Income Assistance in the province of British Columbia, additional hours of employment or an increase in wages, such as an increase in minimum wage, in some circumstances may actually take money out of their pocket. This is due to the design of Income Assistance and its unintended interactions with other income and social support programs and the tax system. In this paper, we illustrate cases where B.C. residents receiving Disability Assistance or Temporary Assistance (the two main programs that comprise Income Assistance in B.C.) have less after-tax income after working additional hours of employment. In modelling after-tax income for recipients of Disability Assistance and Temporary Assistance as they increase their hours of paid work, we detail when and how additional income earned from paid work affects not only their income assistance levels, but also their eligibility and receipt of some general and health-related supplemental benefits. We show that, as Income Assistance recipients allocate more hours to paid work, the reductions in total after-tax income can be sizable. For example, if a single person receiving Disability Assistance (earning a wage of approximately $15 per hour) increases his or her paid work hours from 16 hours a week to 35 hours a week, it reduces his or her total after-tax income by $1,500 a year. This loss is not just limited to a decline in after-tax income. Access to some general and health-related supplemental benefits provided to Income Assistance recipients may also be lost from working these additional hours.1 By addressing these program-design elements of the current Income Assistance program, the B.C. government can improve the well-being of those receiving Income Assistance. Reforms may also decrease expenditures on Income Assistance in the long-run. Allowing recipients to increase their hours of work or earnings within the year, as their situation permits, without the risk of having their benefits reduced, may actually help more people transition from Income Assistance towards permanent employment, thus breaking the cycle of poverty and increasing social inclusion. Many recipients of Income Assistance already face numerous barriers to paid work, other than those analyzed here, as the result of disability-related employment constraints. After-tax income reductions like those described here create another barrier to employment for these populations that the B.C. government can and should address. Canada's commitment to improving social inclusion for specific populations, such as persons with disabilities, heighten the importance of identifying inequalities and poverty traps within our income assistance system. Institutional barriers to inclusive activities such as employment must be removed to meet these commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]