This study assesses the overall effect of SSP on all the children in the program group as well as the effect on those children whose parents received at least one supplement payment. The results suggest that if a program like SSP was to be introduced to the general population, it would be unlikely to affect children’s health, behaviour, and academic achievement, regardless of the level of program take-up.

The post Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) – The Effect of the Self-Sufficiency Project on Children appeared first on SRDC.

This paper suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, formal education has no significant causal effect on IA use. The paper also finds substantial educational upgrading by single parents in receipt of IA.

Higher formal education does not cause lower welfare use. Instead, the paper finds that favourable unobserved characteristics — such as labour market ability, motivation, and preferences — cause some welfare clients to have both higher levels of education and shorter, less frequent spells on welfare. Consequently, the paper concludes that a policy aimed at improving the educational attainments of former welfare recipients may have only limited effects on the reliance on income assistance.

The post Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) – The Effects of Human Capital and Earnings Supplements on Income Assistance Dependence in Canada appeared first on SRDC.

QTE estimates show that the SSP program had heterogeneous impacts on the distributions of earnings, transfers, and total income — heterogeneity that would be missed by looking only at average treatment effects. The authors argue that these findings are consistent with labour supply theory, in which workers respond to financial incentives by changing their hours worked and, in some cases, reducing the reservation wages at which they will just be willing to take a job.

The post Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) – Distributional Impacts of the Self-Sufficiency Project appeared first on SRDC.

The post Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) – The Value of Non-Market Time Lost During the Self-Sufficiency Project appeared first on SRDC.

(1) an eligibility incentive for everyone in the program group to remain on welfare for a year to become eligible for the subsidy,

(2) an establishment incentive for members of the treatment group who satisfied the waiting period requirement to find a job and leave welfare within the next 12 months, and

(3) an entitlement incentive for those who established SSP eligibility to work full time and remain off welfare in the three-year period during which subsidy payments were available.

Nearly all of the delayed exiters — people who delayed their exit from IA in response to the supplement — left IA within two to three months of the end of the waiting period and became entitled for the SSP subsidy. The paper estimates that roughly two thirds of the peak impact of SSP on welfare participation was attributable to the time-limited entitlement feature of SSP.

Those who received subsidy payments tended to remain off welfare, even after the subsidy payments ended. About 60 to 90 per cent of the entitlement incentive effects experienced by members of the treatment group during their three-year period of subsidy eligibility persisted in the immediate post-entitlement period, though the effect faded relatively quickly.

The post Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) – Understanding the Dynamic Effects of the Self-Sufficiency Project Applicant Study appeared first on SRDC.

Estimates of the “effect of the treatment on the treated” are generated, where the “treated” are defined as those in the SSP Plus and regular SSP program groups who qualified for the earnings supplement by finding a full-time job within the first 12 months after random assignment. The study finds evidence of the impact of SSP Plus on unemployment and employment durations during the period when those who took up the earnings supplement were still eligible for that supplement.

The post Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) – An Econometric Analysis of the Incremental Impact of SSP Plus appeared first on SRDC.

The study shows that there is a substantial amount of educational upgrading among single parents on welfare. SSP program group members acquired less additional education than their counterparts in the control group. One possible explanation is that SSP encouraged full-time employment leaving less time for acquiring additional education. Those who upgraded their education generally achieved larger gains in employment and wage rates than did their counterparts who did not acquire additional education, the study concludes.

The post Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) – Educational Upgrading and its Consequences among Welfare Recipients: Empirical Evidence from the Self-Sufficiency Project appeared first on SRDC.

Then a program group is simulated from a randomized experiment within the model, and the outcomes are compared with those of the program group from SSP to determine whether the model is an appropriate tool to use in estimating the behavioural response to SSP.

The post Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) – Evaluating Search and Matching Models Using Experimental Data appeared first on SRDC.

The model allows for the simulation of changes in the length of time an individual is required to stay on IA, the length of time within which a full-time job has to be found, the length of time the bonus can be received, and alternative levels of generosity of the bonus.

The post Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) – Human Capital and Search Behaviour appeared first on SRDC.

In addition, several leading academic researchers presented research that used data from Canada’s most famous social policy experiment – the Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP).

The Making Work Pay Symposium was funded by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), and was organized by SRDC.

The post Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) – Making Work Pay Symposium appeared first on SRDC.