Summary

Social inclusion and material well-being: Income security

Friday March 28, 2003 - Plenary

Jean Lock Kunz of the federal Policy Research Initiative made a presentation that combined a template for a new research framework with Harry Potter analogies. She underscored the need for evidence-based research into the conjunctions between poverty and social exclusion, noting that there are a variety of measures and definitions of poverty.

Social exclusion usually includes financial insecurity as well as non-financial factors, Kunz said, but most definitions of exclusion recognize that a socially-excluded individual does not or cannot participate in key activities in society. While a range of voluntary and involuntary factors can contribute to social exclusion, for policy and research purposes Kunz focused on those who are impoverished and involuntarily excluded and asked the following questions:

• What are the determinants of exclusion?
• From what are we excluded?
• Who is excluded?
• Who is excluding?

Kunz suggested that social inclusion and exclusion are opposites when the notion of exclusion is broadened, adding that researchers must find the right focus to ensure that people do not miss the Platform 9¾ in their lives and communities.

Canadian Auto Workers economist Jim Stanford recounted a decade of transition in economic and labour market policies and spoke out for programs that provide a measure of income security. Through most of the early 1990s, the consensus among academics, policy-makers and the media was that the gap between the Canadian and US labour markets was due to Canada’s lack of “flexibility”. Income security programs such as unemployment insurance and welfare sustained major cuts, and labour market policies were rewritten.

Canada’s economy is faring far better since the late 1990s, with employment levels much closer to those in the US. But labour markets are more closely regulated, and Canada still maintains social programs that are more costly per capita than the American equivalent. Looking back, Stanford said differences in flexibility were overstated as a cause of Canada’s economic difficulties, and there was no empirical reason to cut spending on unemployment insurance.

Stanford said the economic justification for future policy and program changes should extend beyond a straight head-to-head comparison of Canadian and US data. Getting rid of poverty is a political problem, he stressed, and there is a wealth of anti-poverty and anti-exclusion research to guide decision-making. The first step is to use it.

Margaret Dechman, Coordinator of the Family Mosaic Project in Halifax, reported on a 20-year study of mothers and their children in Nova Scotia. The study found strong correlations among a variety of factors, such as low income, school dropout rates, and social exclusion. “Exclusion is about the compounding of factors,” she said, noting that that mothers and their children are more likely to become more marginalized as the negative social and personal factors in their lives add up. Dechman said policies and programs should aim to:

• Foster strong relationships and encourage children to see themselves as worthwhile;
• Develop broadly-encompassing systems and evaluation procedures that go beyond simple program evaluation to support strategy development;
• Steer clear of adversarial and punitive approaches, such as removing children from sports programs when they aren’t doing well in school.

Facilitator/provocateur Allan Moscovitch of Carleton University said poverty is an indicator of problems, but social exclusion literature tends to place the question of “why” at centre of its discourse. He noted that there is still no consensus on the causes of social exclusion.

A participant stressed the importance of working to help troubled children and families, recalling one 5½ year-old boy whose teacher had labeled him as a problem, and perhaps mentally ill. As the participant helped the child work through his problems, it became apparent that he was in fact gifted, but lived in a difficult family.

An audience member said the “Olympic model” of pitting one person or student against another is not helpful in resolving students’ difficulties at school. Dechman agreed that children, especially marginalized kids, respond better when the adults in their lives stress their progress, rather than comparing them against others.

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For more information about the conference, contact:
 
Sarah Zgraggen
The Willow Group
Tel: (613) 722-8796;
Fax: (613) 729-6206;
e-mail: szgraggen@thewillowgroup.com