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Henry
George School
of Social Science
of Los Angeles
Box 655
Tujunga CA
91042
818 352-4141
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From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Ed Weick
Sent: Saturday, June 11, 2005 7:55
AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] Fw:
[ow-watch-l] Poverty study full of surprises,by Carol Goar, Toronto Star
A thought provoking item from another list.
Poverty study full of surprises
by CAROL GOAR dd Jun. 10, 2005
Toronto Star
In an ideal world, the poor would be blameless, resilient and sympathetic to
others who have fallen on hard times.
In real life, they're just like any other segment of society. Some are
victims of circumstance; others are snared in troubles of their own making.
Some are good neighbours; others denigrate immigrants, racial minorities and
unconventional families. Some can see past their own misfortune; others have
a permanent chip on their shoulder.
Tempting as it may be for social activists to portray the poor in
romanticized terms, it is not the basis for sound public policy. That is one
of the lessons that emerges from a three-year study of 40 lower-income
families struggling to survive in Ontario
in the late '90s. The final
report, entitled Telling Tales: Living the Effects of Public Policy, was
released yesterday.
It is a useful antidote to a lot of the fuzzy thinking, academic theorizing
and simplistic analysis that goes on in the social policy field.
The authors, Sheila Neysmith of the University
of Toronto, Kate Bezanson
of
Brock University and Anne O'Connell of the
Ontario Institute for Students in
Education, built their research on the premise that those who have
experienced life on welfare deserve a voice in the debate.
They chose 40 households across the province, representing a cross-section
of families in - or on the brink of - poverty. Between 1997 and 2000, they
interviewed the participants at regular intervals. (That was the period
during which workfare was introduced, social assistance was chopped by 22
per cent, labour laws were loosened, taxes were cut and many public services
were privatized. Meanwhile, the economy was being reshaped by
globalization.)
Not surprisingly, they found that almost none of their subjects moved up the
socio-economic ladder. Even those who found work slipped back into poverty
over the course of the study.
But there were surprises in the reams of data the researchers collected.
One was that a job - long considered the mainstay of a household's survival
- actually plays a fairly limited role in keeping low-income families
afloat. Participants cobbled together income from a variety of sources, got
help from relatives and friends and depended on social supports such as
subsidized housing and food banks. If any of these lifelines snapped, they
were in crisis.
A second eye-opener was that people who have been cruelly stereotyped often
do the same thing to others. It didn't take long for some of the study's
participants to display racist, sexist, anti-immigrant and homophobic
attitudes. One welfare recipient was eager to see the government crack down
on freeloaders. "We were struck by how people managed the contradictions
in
their daily lives - not the least of which were the tensions between their
ideas of what constitutes a good policy and their actual experience of
policy consequences," the authors said.
A third finding that caught them off-guard was that sole-support mothers
don't want the government to hound "deadbeat" dads. Experience has
taught
them that these policies don't work, infuriate their former spouses and
place them and their children in danger.
Finally, the authors discovered to their dismay that most of the training
programs offered by Ottawa
and Queen's Park are totally out of synch with
today's job market. They are designed to deal with brief interruptions in
employment. Yet most of the participants in the study had never known - and
never expected to know - steady work. They juggled two or three minimum-wage
jobs or hired themselves out through temp agencies. The last thing they
needed were courses in r�sum� writing or job-search techniques.
The one shortcoming of Telling Tales is that it doesn't translate the
experience of its subjects into practical guidance for policymakers.
The authors call for a rethinking of social programs to reflect 21st century
realities. They urge governments to look beyond the labour market for
solutions to persistent poverty. And they advocate a redistribution of paid
and unpaid work.
Unfortunately, such generalizations don't help a lot at a time when
resources are stretched and there is little political will to modernize
Ontario's
social safety net. To initiate change, policymakers need a few
well-targeted reforms that will improve people's lives quickly and visibly.
Telling Tales is an excellent piece of social research. It is detailed,
nuanced and unflinchingly honest.
But it could use a sequel that moves the plot from insight to action.
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