Take a Number: How Citizens' Encounters with Government Shape Political Engagement 9780228004554

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ta k e a n u m b e r

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carleton library series The Carleton Library Series publishes books about Canadian economics, geography, history, politics, public policy, society and culture, and related topics, in the form of leading new scholarship and reprints of classics in these fields. The series is funded by Carleton University, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, and is under the guidance of the Carleton Library Series Editorial Board, which consists of faculty members of Carleton University. Suggestions and proposals for manuscripts and new editions of classic works are welcome and may be directed to the Carleton Library Series Editorial Board c/o the Library, Carleton University, Ottawa K 1S 5B 6, at [email protected], or on the web at www.carleton.ca/cls.

cls board members: John Clarke, Ross Eaman, Jennifer Henderson, Paul Litt, Laura Macdonald, Jody Mason, Stanley Winer, Barry Wright 236 Trade, Industrial Policy, and International Competition, Second Edition Richard G. Harris Introduction by David A. Wolfe 237 An Undisciplined Economist Robert G. Evans on Health Economics, Health Care Policy, and Population Health Edited by Morris L. Barer, Greg L. Stoddart, Kimberlyn M. McGrail, and Chris B. McLeod 238 Wildlife, Land, and People A Century of Change in Prairie Canada Donald G. Wetherell 239 Filling the Ranks Manpower in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918 Richard Holt 240 Tax, Order, and Good Government A New Political History of Canada, 1867–1917 E.A. Heaman 241 Catharine Parr Traill’s The Female Emigrant’s Guide Cooking with a Canadian Classic Edited by Nathalie Cooke and Fiona Lucas 242 Tug of War Surveillance Capitalism, Military Contracting, and the Rise of the Security State Jocelyn Wills 243 The Hand of God Claude Ryan and the Fate of Canadian Liberalism, 1925–1971 Michael Gauvreau 244 Report on Social Security for Canada (New Edition) Leonard Marsh

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245 Like Everyone Else but Different The Paradoxical Success of Canadian Jews, Second Edition Morton Weinfeld with Randal F. Schnoor and Michelle Shames 246 Beardmore The Viking Hoax That Rewrote History Douglas Hunter 247 Stanley’s Dream The Medical Expedition to Easter Island Jacalyn Duffin 248 Change and Continuity Canadian Political Economy in the New Millennium Edited by Mark P. Thomas, Leah F. Vosko, Carlo Fanelli, and Olena Lyubchenko 249 Home Feelings Liberal Citizenship and the Canadian Reading Camp Movement Jody Mason 250 The Art of Sharing The Richer versus the Poorer Provinces since Confederation Mary Janigan 251 Recognition and Revelation Short Nonfiction Writings Margaret Laurence Edited by Nora Foster Stovel 252 Anxious Days and Tearful Nights Canadian War Wives during the Great War Martha Hanna 253 Take a Number How Citizens’ Encounters with Government Shape Political Engagement Elisabeth Gidengil

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Take a Number How Citizens’ Encounters with Government Shape Political Engagement

elisabeth gidengil

Carleton Library Series 253 McGill-­Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

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©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2020 ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

978-0-2280-0392-2 (cloth) 978-0-2280-0393-9 (paper) 978-0-2280-0455-4 (eP DF ) 978-0-2280-0456-1 (eP UB)

Legal deposit fourth quarter 2020 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Take a number : how citizens’ encounters with government shape political engagement / Elisabeth Gidengil. Names: Gidengil, Elisabeth, 1947– author. Series: Carleton library series; 253. Description: Series statement: Carleton library series; 253 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200323377 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200323644 | IS BN 9780228003922 (cloth) | I SB N 9780228003939 (paper) | IS BN 9780228004554 (eP DF ) | IS B N 9780228004561 (eP U B ) Subjects: L CS H: Political participation—Social aspects—Canada. | L C SH : Public w ­ elfare—Canada. | L CS H: Welfare recipients—Political activity— Canada. | L CS H: Human services—Canada. | L C SH : Canada—Social policy. Classification: L CC J L 186.5 .G 53 2020 | DDC 323/.0420971—dc23

This book was typeset by Marquis Interscript in 10.5 / 13 Sabon.

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Contents



Tables and Figures  vii

  1 Introduction  3   2 Policy Feedback and Mass Political Behaviour  19   3 How Aware Are People of Government Programs?  33   4 How Do Experiences with Government Programs and Services Vary? 55   5 How Does Program Participation Affect Political Engagement?  78   6 How Does Program Participation Affect Political and Civic Activity? 97   7 Are Policy Feedback Effects Gendered?  112   8 Do Policy Feedback Effects Vary by Age?  128   9 How Does Program Participation Affect Political Support and Perceptions of Politics?  140 10 Do Experiences with the Health-Care System Have Feedback Effects? 165 11 Conclusions  180

Notes   199



References   207



Index   223

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Tables and Figures

ta b l e s

3.1 Social background characteristics and program knowledge   45 3.2 Impact of social background characteristics on program knowledge   49 3.3 Social background characteristics and knowledge of tax benefits 51 3.4 Impact of social background characteristics on knowledge of tax benefits  52 4.1 Experiences contacting programs  68 4.2 Impact of social background characteristics on perceived discrimination 73 5.1 Social background characteristics and psychological ­engagement with politics  88 5.2 Program design and psychological engagement with politics 92 6.1 Social background characteristics and political and civic activity 101 6.2 Reported program use and political and civic activity  102 6.3 Program design and political and civic activity  105 6.4 Negative experiences and political and civic activity  108 9.1 Reported program use and satisfaction with the provincial government 144 9.2 Program design and confidence in institutions  148 9.3 Negative experiences and confidence in institutions  149

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viii

Tables and Figures

9.4 Impact of negative experiences on satisfaction with democracy 154 9.5 Program design and negative images of politics  158 10.1 Social background characteristics and evaluations of the Ontario health-care system  172 10.2 Experiences with and evaluations of the health-care system 174 figures

1.1 Programs accessed  10 3.1 Measuring program knowledge  38 3.2 Knowledge of government-funded programs and services 40 3.3 Knowledge of tax credits  42 3.4 Number of correct responses to program knowledge questions 44 3.5 Number of correct responses to tax questions  50 4.1 Reported difficulty of obtaining program information  63 4.2 Reported difficulty of accessing programs  65 4.3 Contact with government offices  67 4.4 Vignettes for Service Ontario and Ontario Works  70 4.5 Perceived reasons for discrimination  72 4.6 Comfort with complaining to a manager  75 5.1 Percentage of program clients having a negative contact experience 83 5.2 Measuring psychological engagement with politics  86 6.1 Political and civic activity  99 7.1 Reported program use by sex  115 7.2 Political and civic activity by sex  119 7.3 Sex and provincial party preference  123 7.4 Sex, reported program use, and predicted party preference 125 7.5 Sex, negative experiences, and predicted party preference 125 7.6 Sex, social assistance, and party preference  126 8.1 Reported program use by age group  131 8.2 Program knowledge by age group  132 8.3 Political and civic activity by age group  137 8.4 Reported program use and political and civic activity  138

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Tables and Figures

ix

9.1 Measuring political support and perceptions of politics  143 9.2 Moderating effect of reported program use on negative experiences (confidence in government)  151 9.3 Moderating effect of reported program use on negative experiences (confidence in the justice system)  152 9.4 Moderating effect of reported program use on negative ­experiences (program users’ satisfaction with democracy) 155 9.5 Images of politics  157 9.6 Moderating effect of reported program use on negative experiences (negative images of politics)  160 9.7 Words associated with government. Reproduced with permission from WordItOut, https://worditout.com  161 9.8 Negative experiences and words associated with government 162 9.9 Words associated with government. Reproduced with permission from WordItOut, https://worditout.com  163 10.1 Evaluations of the Ontario health-care system  171

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ta k e a n u m b e r

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1 Introduction

Democracy is founded on the principle of political equality, but in practice socioeconomic disadvantage and other forms of social inequality translate into unequal participation in the country’s politics. This book brings a new perspective to bear on the question of unequal participation in Canadian politics. Rather than focusing on people’s social background characteristics, as so much of the political behaviour literature does, it looks at the impact of government programs and the lessons about politics that citizens learn through participation in those programs. The theoretical framework is derived from work conducted by policy scholars on the feedbacks effects of program use. First, and most obviously, these scholars underline that government benefits are a source of material resources. People who are struggling to pay the rent and feed their families may well lack the time and the energy to follow politics or engage in political activities. Receipt of benefits has the potential to offset some of the negative effects of material disadvantage. Compensating for resource deficits, though, is only part of the story. Benefitting from government programs can motivate people to become more active politically, whether from a desire to protect those programs or from an enhanced sense of the relevance of politics to their daily lives. A classic Canadian example of a policy that gave citizens an incentive to participate in politics was the proposed removal of inflation protection from Old Age Security pensions, which mobilized seniors to militate against it. Policies also have interpretive effects. In other words, policy design conveys “messages to people about whether their interests are

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legitimate and how much (or little) they are valued by the society. These policy designs serve to reinforce the stereotypes of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving people’ so that policies afford privilege to some and stigmatize and disenfranchise others” (Schneider and Ingram 1997, 6). Policy feedback scholars have also highlighted the political learning that takes place in the course of citizens’ everyday encounters with government bureaucracies and service providers. Underpinning their argument is the assumption that people generalize their experiences to government and politics at large. As Lipsky (2010) recognized in his pioneering study of public service workers, “interactions with street-level bureaucracies are places where citizens experience directly the government they have implicitly constructed” (xi). Research in the United States shows that these interactions can affect people’s perceptions of government responsiveness, their own sense of political agency, and their propensity to participate in politics. Studies have found that people who have frustrating experiences trying to resolve a problem or access a government program may be left with a feeling of political powerlessness and a diminished belief in their own political agency, and this can translate into a perception that participating in politics is simply not worth the effort. Importantly, clients’ experiences are likely to vary, depending on the type of program and how a program is designed. Policy scholars have called on those who study political behaviour to examine how public policies influence political participation, but scholars who specialize in the study of mass political behaviour have been slow to respond. This is curious, given that government programs “make up a basic and persistent presence in the lives of modern citizens … [providing] the basis for experiences of government-in-action far more regularly than do the activities that political scientists more commonly study” (Mettler and Soss 2004, 64). As a result, we know little, if anything, about the effects of program use on political engagement in Canada. Much of what is known about policy feedback effects is derived from studies conducted in the United States, but we cannot assume that the American findings necessarily generalize to other countries. As Béland and Schlager (2019) observe, “the overwhelming emphasis on the United States” creates a “major lacuna in policy feedback scholarship” (184). Conventionally considered the archetype of the liberal welfare regime, the United States is hardly a typical case. Building on Esping-Anderson’s (1990) work, a study of the generosity

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5

of social-insurance benefits in eighteen O E C D countries gave the United States the lowest score (Scruggs and Allan 2006). At only 18.7, compared with the O E C D average of 27.0, the United States ranked as the most liberal welfare regime.1 Looking beyond social insurance programs to means-tested programs, the “separation between benefits that are regarded as ‘deserved’ because of their contributory nature, and ‘handouts’ to the poor, who are conceived as largely ‘undeserving’, is particularly rigid” (Ellison 2006, 84–5) in the United States. Like the United States, Canada is traditionally classified as a liberal welfare regime. However, it is less robustly liberal than its neighbour to the south (Evans 2002). Indeed, the Scruggs and Allan (2006) study gave Canada a score of 25.0 on the benefit generosity index, close to the OEC D average, and concluded that “Canada scores much closer to ‘conservative’ France and ‘social democratic’ Finland than it does to ‘liberal’ Australia or the United States” (67). In contrast to the United States, for example, Canada’s national social-insurance programs include maternity and parental leave benefits, and unemployment benefits are available for up to thirty-six to forty-five weeks, depending on the claimant’s region of residence, in contrast to twentysix weeks in the United States. When it comes to welfare provision, the new paternalism has shaped discourse and program design in Canada, as it has in the United States. Welfare reform has been similarly premised on “a notion of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor” (Luccisano and Romagnoli 2007, 743), and receipt of welfare benefits may be tied to workfare requirements, depending on the province. However, Canada has not undergone as thorough a neoliberal restructuring as the United States (Mahon 2008). Reforms to the American welfare system have resulted in a very hierarchical model of public provision: “Welfare programs have been recast to emphasize behavioral expectations and monitoring, incentives for right behavior, and penalties for noncompliance. Meanstested benefits of various stripes, from nutritional assistance to housing support, have been made conditional on good behavior” (Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011, 2). At the same time, welfare reform in the United States has implicated the country’s racial divides, and welfare recipients are stigmatized as “moochers” and “welfare queens.” As Harell and her colleagues (2008) observe, “In the US ‘welfare’ combines negative stereotypes about poverty being the result of an individual’s lack of motivation or ambition with deeply embedded racial stereotypes about African

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Americans” (3). True, the same authors conclude that welfare also appears to be a “dirty word” in Canada: public opinion is much less likely to favour spending when the question asks about welfare as opposed to social services for the poor. Nonetheless, welfare attitudes do not seem to be as racialized in Canada as they are in the United States (Harell, Soroka, and Iyengar 2016). Canadians are less likely to support giving an eligible individual social assistance when that person is portrayed as being Indigenous, but this effect was confined to people who were predisposed to dislike Indigenous peoples (Harell, Soroka, and Ladner 2014; see also Harell, Soroka, and Iyengar 2016). Taken together, differences in the extent of the neoliberal restructuring of the welfare system and public perceptions of welfare recipients suggest that Canadian clients may be less likely than their American counterparts to experience demeaning treatment and to feel stigmatized. If so, we could expect that the feedback effects of welfare will not be as disempowering and demobilizing in Canada as they are in the United States. Indeed, it is possible that welfare recipients in Canada might be apt to take a more active part in political and civic life than similarly situated nonrecipients, even when – or perhaps especially when – they have negative experiences. Here, differences in the nature of the party system and, more specifically, the presence of a viable social democratic party and a major party that has often positioned itself to the left of centre, could matter. If clients have frustrating experiences trying to access a government program or to resolve a problem, they may be more likely than their American equivalents to favour voice over exit, to borrow Hirschman’s (1972) language. Using original survey data, this book takes an in-depth look at policy feedback effects in Canada. It explores how people’s encounters with government, and the effects of those encounters on political engagement, differ depending on the type of program used. The analysis spans a range of government programs that are administered at the federal, provincial, and local levels. The programs differ in their design, ranging from programs that involve close scrutiny and require clients to keep demonstrating their eligibility, to benefits that are administered through the tax system or to which eligible recipients are automatically entitled. Political engagement is broadly conceived to include political knowledge and psychological orientations such as political self-confidence and perceptions of government responsiveness, as well as participation in a variety of civic and political activities. The book also examines the impact of experiences with government

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agencies on political support and perceptions of politics and looks beyond social services agencies to consider the feedback effects of encounters with the health-care system. t h e s u r v e y d ata

The data are drawn from a two-wave survey designed to explore policy feedback effects. The survey was fielded by Public Square Research. The sample was drawn from the Vision Critical panel.2 It included a large oversample of respondents who have received meanstested benefits or were defined by the Ontario government as living in poverty. The oversample of needs-based recipients was selected from among panel participants in a monthly survey who responded positively when asked, “Have you ever used a government program that helps low-income individuals and families, such as Social Assistance, the Employment Insurance Family Supplement, the Guaranteed Income Supplement or the Ontario Child Benefit, or other similar program?”3 The first wave of the survey dealt with respondents’ program use and experiences accessing government services and benefits. The average completion time was 8.6 minutes for the general population sample and 10.6 minutes for the needs-assisted oversample. The average completion time differed because the questions about program experiences were relevant only to program participants, and there were obviously more of these in the needs-assisted sample. The second wave focused on respondents’ political and civic engagement. The average completion time was 11.7 minutes. The two waves were fielded one week apart in winter 2016. The rationale for having two surveys was that some of the more disadvantaged respondents might decline to complete a single long survey. As it turned out, the reinterview rate for the needs-based oversample was 88.1 per cent,4 compared with 83.5 per cent for the general population sample.5 Naturally, the general population sample also includes users of needs-based programs. They are included in the analysis along with the needsbased oversample. In total, 1,692 respondents completed both waves (751 general population and 941 needs-assisted oversample).6 The survey was conducted in the province of Ontario. Given the variation in government programs and services at the provincial level in Canada, the survey needed to be conducted in a single province. As Canada’s most populous and socially diverse province, Ontario

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provides a good site to explore policy feedback effects. The survey was conducted using an online panel. One advantage of an online survey is that it is likely to reduce social desirability bias on the part of people who might otherwise be reluctant to report that they have used means-tested programs. Relying on respondents’ self-reported use of government programs may still be subject to error, but studies that have checked such reports against administrative data in the United States have found that the amount of error is typically small (Mettler and Stonecash 2008). Possible concerns about the representativeness of an online sample in light of the so-called digital divide were mitigated by providing access to the surveys through computers at libraries and other locations. It was not necessary for participants to own a laptop or smartphone in order to take part. This is the first survey to focus on Canadians’ program experiences and the feedback effects of these experiences on citizens’ political engagement. However, some caution is needed in drawing causal inferences. Given that the survey data are cross-sectional, the possibility of selection bias cannot be ruled out. In other words, there may be common factors that account for both the nature of claimants’ experiences and their political engagement. Including appropriate controls in the statistical analyses can mitigate the risk but not eliminate it. A better solution is to use a method that mimics the logic of a controlled experiment. This is done in chapter 6 in order to enhance confidence in the key findings regarding feedback effects on the propensity to participate in politics. The fact remains, though, that we can never be certain of causal inferences when undertaking empirical research of any sort. the programs

The first wave of the survey included questions about eleven different social programs. These programs differed widely in terms of their design and authority structures. The selection of programs was predicated on the logic of what Campbell (2012) has termed the graduated effect research design (see, for example, Bruch, Ferree, and Soss 2010): “researchers look for gradations in program designs and correspondingly graduated attitudinal or behavioral effects” (345). In this design, the effects of programs that differ in terms of their authority structures and the degree of discretion that service providers enjoy are compared. The working hypothesis, at least in the American literature, has been

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9

that the more paternalistic the program structure, the more negative the effects on political engagement will be. The question about social assistance (or what is colloquially known as welfare) was always asked first, but the order of the questions about the remaining programs was randomized. There were followup questions about experiences with social assistance and up to three other programs. Respondents were asked about their experiences accessing the programs, whether they had ever contacted a government office about each program, and how they were treated. Figure 1.1 lists the percentage of respondents who reported using each of the programs for both the general population and the needsbased oversample. Social Assistance is a means-tested program that provides financial assistance to individuals who lack sufficient financial resources to cover their basic living expenses (see Graefe 2015). Unless they have caregiving responsibilities, individuals and other adult members of their household must be “willing to make reasonable efforts to find, prepare for and keep a job” (Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services 2020d) in order to be eligible. This is a program with a very clear authority structure. Caseworkers are required to undertake a participation review every three months “to ensure recipients are meeting their eligibility requirements and are making progress toward preparing for, finding and maintaining employment” (Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services 2020c). The caseworker has a good deal of discretionary power over clients, including the ability to terminate their benefits. The Ontario Disability Support Program provides assistance to people who have a long-term or recurrent mental or physical disability that substantially impairs their ability to work or care for themselves. It provides both income support and employment supports. To receive assistance from either program, applicants must meet with a caseworker, provide information about their income and housing costs, and give the Ontario Works office permission to access information about them from other agencies and organizations, including credit rating agencies and financial institutions. Thus, both programs involve very close scrutiny of clients’ lives and circumstances as well as a very hierarchical authority structure. Ontario’s Affordable Housing Program and the Ontario Student Assistance Program are both means-tested but involve much less intrusion into recipients’ private lives. Administered by local service managers, the housing assistance program provides rent-geared-to-income

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Take a Number Unemployment benefit Trillium Benefit Drug program Child Benefit

Social assistance (general) Student assistance Maternity benefit Social assistance (disability) GAINS Housing assistance Veterans’ benefits 0%

10%

20%

30%

Needs-based

40%

50%

60%

70%

General population

Figure 1.1  Programs accessed Note: GAINS is the Ontario Guaranteed Annual Income System.

housing and/or rent supplements to low-income households, interestfree loans to enable low- and moderate-income renters to afford the down payment on a home, and financial assistance to enable homeowners to renovate their home to acceptable standards. Applicants are required to consent to the release and disclosure of information about their financial situation. The Student Assistance Program provides a mix of grants and loans to help students pay for college or university. The amount of financial assistance received depends upon the student’s education expenses and personal financial situation. The program is means-tested, but the application is made online, and supporting documents are submitted via the school’s financial aid office. Housing assistance and student assistance clients do not have caseworkers. As such, clients’ contact with service providers will typically be limited to occasions where they need information or are having a problem with the receipt of benefits. The same is largely true of veterans’ benefits. A wide variety of benefits and programs are available from the federal government for former service men and women and their families. While the War Veterans Allowance is means-tested, other programs such as disability benefits are available regardless of income. Means-testing is based only on the veteran’s income tax return, and veterans only have a

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11

case manager when they are in a rehabilitation program or suffering from a psychiatric illness. Respondents were also asked about two social insurance benefits that are available through the federal government’s Employment Insurance program. Maternity benefits are provided through Employment Insurance to women who have to cease work because they are pregnant or have recently given birth. The maximum benefit period is fifteen weeks, after which parental benefits (which may be divided between the parents) are payable for up to thirty-five weeks. Both maternity and parental benefits pay 55 per cent of average insurable weekly earnings up to a maximum amount of $562 per week (at the time of writing). Unemployment benefits are available to qualifying people who have lost their job through no fault of their own and are payable for a maximum of thirty-six to forty-five weeks, depending on the region of residence. Like maternity benefits, unemployment benefits are contributory benefits and are not means-tested. Unlike benefits administered through the tax system, both maternity/parental and unemployment benefits can be considered visible programs in that it is clear that the money is coming from the government (Mettler 2007). However, there are potentially consequential differences when it comes to their administration. In the case of unemployment benefits, recipients must be available to work. To maintain their eligibility, they must demonstrate that they are actively looking for work, and they must maintain a written record of employers they have contacted and when they contacted them. These requirements mean that recipients of unemployment benefits are likely to have more contact with service providers who may be skeptical of their entitlement to benefits. Indeed, their experiences may be more akin to those of social assistance claimants than recipients of housing assistance or student assistance. However, they are not subject to as much control and supervision, and the process of demonstrating eligibility is not as intrusive. Like these social insurance programs, the Ontario Drug Benefit Program can be considered a universal program since all seniors with an Ontario health card are eligible for the benefit. They simply need to take their health card to the pharmacy on turning sixty-five and inform the pharmacist that they are now eligible for coverage. The program covers most of the cost of 4,300 prescription drug products as well as some nutrition products and diabetic testing materials. While people receiving social assistance can obtain coverage via their

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caseworker, other people under the age of sixty-five whose drug costs are high relative to their income need to make an application.7 Apart from this one small exception, the program is not means-tested. The survey also asked about three provincial social programs that are accessed by filing an income tax return and are therefore much less visible than the social insurance programs. The Ontario Trillium Benefit provides tax credits for low-income people to defray energy costs and to provide relief for sales and property taxes. The Ontario Child Benefit provides a maximum payment of $1,434 per child per year (at the time of writing) to low- and moderate-income families (whether the parents are working or not) to help with the cost of raising their children. Finally, the Ontario Guaranteed Annual Income System is paid to qualifying seniors aged sixty-five and over to ensure that their income does not fall below the annual level guaranteed by the province after taking account of both the federal Old Age Security (OA S) pension and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (G I S ). plan of the book

The next chapter provides an extensive review of the literature on policy feedback effects. While most of the literature is based on the American context, the review also includes studies conducted in Britain and Sweden. The review begins with the two foundational studies that provided the initial theoretical framework for thinking about the impact of government programs on citizen engagement. It moves on to look at the early empirical studies and then discusses findings that have nuanced some of the conclusions to emerge from those studies. The review ends with a discussion of some possible reasons why even programs that allow service providers a good deal of discretion in determining eligibility and involve intrusion into clients’ private lives may nonetheless not necessarily be disempowering. The third chapter asks a very basic question: How familiar are people with government programs? Answering this question is important for a number of reasons. The resource and interpretive effects of programs first identified by scholars like Pierson (1993) and Schneider and Ingram (1993) presuppose an awareness of the programs’ existence. Awareness is also critical when it comes to accountability: if voters are to hold governments accountable, they need to know what governments have – and have not – been doing. From this perspective, government ­programs can serve as a handy information shortcut for judging

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government responsiveness. Knowing how aware target beneficiaries are of programs is critically important information for those who make and administer social policy. Lack of awareness bears very directly on the problem of non-take-up of social benefits, which is viewed by many as being at least as problematic as their abuse. This chapter assesses people’s knowledge of a variety of government programs before moving on to address the critical question of whether those who are the most likely to need the programs are also the most likely to know of their existence. The chapter ends with some suggestions for enhancing knowledge of government programs and services. Chapter 4 looks at people’s experiences with government programs and services. Information costs and stigma are identified as two important reasons why people who are aware of a given program may nonetheless fail to claim benefits to which they are entitled. Information costs are a function of the ease or difficulty of the claiming process. These costs vary, depending on the design of the program and the administrative rules. These rules also influence the extent to which the process of claiming triggers or reinforces feelings of stigmatization. After reviewing the claiming process for each of the eleven programs included in the survey of Ontario residents, the chapter explores how claimants found out about programs and whether they found it easy or difficult to get program information. Then the chapter looks at people’s experiences accessing programs and their experiences when they contacted a government office about a program, focusing on how these experiences varied from program to program. In order to get more insight into people’s perceptions of how clients are likely to be treated, survey respondents’ reactions to two vignettes are also analyzed. These vignettes randomly varied the identity of a client applying for social assistance or applying to a Service Ontario centre to replace a lost health card. The chapter also investigates people’s experiences of discrimination or unfair treatment when dealing with a government office. It ends with a discussion of possible ways of enhancing access to government programs and countering claims stigma. The next chapter cuts to the heart of the policy feedback thesis: the impact of program use on political learning. It focuses on the interpretive effects of participation in government programs on psychological engagement with politics. Four facets of psychological engagement are examined: perceptions of government responsiveness, political self-confidence, interest in politics, and political knowledge. The chapter assesses the validity of the optimistic view that heavier

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reliance on government programs results in more positive views of government, a greater sense of personal political efficacy, and higher levels of political interest and knowledge of politics. It goes on to evaluate the more pessimistic prognosis that the feedback effects of program use are contingent on the design of the program and the nature of clients’ experiences with service providers. The concluding discussion focuses on the lessons about politics that clients learn through program participation and how these lessons compare with those learned by their American counterparts. Psychological engagement with politics is typically viewed as a prerequisite for participation in politics. Chapter 6 addresses the bottom-line question: how does program participation affect clients’ political and civic activity? It adopts an expansive approach, examining a wide range of activities, from participating in traditional electoral and legislative arenas to extra-electoral forms of activity like signing petitions and engaging in political consumerism to volunteering and participating in community problem-solving. The chapter investigates the impact of the extent of program use, program design, and experiences with service providers on the different forms of political and civic activity. The chapter ends by discussing the implications of a key finding: far from having a dampening effect, receipt of means-tested benefits is associated with an increased propensity to take an active part in political and civic activities, and this propensity is enhanced by negative experiences with government agencies. The next two chapters examine how policy feedback effects vary, depending upon characteristics of the beneficiaries themselves. The same program can have different effects on political engagement, depending upon beneficiaries’ social backgrounds. For example, Campbell (2003) reported that Social Security–related participation was greater among lower-income seniors than among their more affluent counterparts because they are more dependent on the benefits. Similarly, Mettler (2002, 2005) found that the resource and interpretive effects of the G.I. Bill appeared to be stronger for veterans from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Chapters 7 and 8 focus on two social background characteristics: recipients’ sex and their age. Sex and age do not, of course, exhaust the possibilities when it comes to exploring whether policy feedback effects are contingent on recipients’ social backgrounds. However, the sample is not big enough to allow a similarly in-depth investigation of whether feedback effects are racialized or vary depending on whether the claimant

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is Canadian born or a new Canadian. The same is true of differences in levels of education and income. Too few affluent or universityeducated Canadians have used means-tested programs to permit a robust analysis. Chapter 7 investigates whether policy feedback effects are gendered. Women are typically less interested in politics than men are, they know less about politics, at least as conventionally defined, and they feel less confident of their political abilities. They are also less likely than men to belong to a political party, to contact elected officials, or to donate to a political cause or political party. At the same time, women are more reliant than men on government programs to mitigate the effects of lower incomes and to facilitate their caregiving and reproductive roles. This chapter investigates whether experiences with government programs can shed new light on these persistent sex differences. It also explores whether the interpretive effects of program use can help us understand sex differences in party preference. Chapter 8 focuses on the effects of the recipient’s age. Young Canadians are among the least likely to be interested in politics, to be politically informed, and to be confident of their political abilities. They are also the least likely to vote or to belong to a political party. This is particularly the case for socially disadvantaged young Canadians. This chapter examines whether program participation encourages or discourages greater psychological engagement with politics and involvement in the country’s political and civic life on the part of younger adults and whether the impact of program participation is similar for younger and older adults. The next chapter raises fundamental questions about the implications of people’s experiences with government for political support. If negative experiences erode regime support and confidence in institutions, there is clearly cause for concern. The chapter explores three key aspects of political support. The first relates to the most concrete manifestation of political support: people’s satisfaction with government performance. Two possibilities are investigated. On the one hand, program beneficiaries may be more satisfied, given that their well-being depends on the government’s redistributive policies. On the other hand, negative interactions with service providers could spill over into dissatisfaction with the government. Next, the chapter investigates confidence in institutions, differentiating between confidence in the different levels of government and confidence in the justice system. Lastly, the chapter considers feedback effects on the

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most abstract aspect of political support: people’s satisfaction with the way that democracy works in Canada. It asks whether heavier reliance on government programs translates into an enhanced sense that democracy works, given that the system seems to be ensuring that basic needs are met, or whether frustrating experiences with government agencies erode regime support. The chapter also looks at people’s general orientations toward politics and government. It capitalizes on a novel approach to assessing people’s perceptions of politics. The survey presented respondents with a mix of negative and positive images and asked them to select the three that best represented what politics meant to them. Respondents were also asked to write down the first three words that came to their minds when they thought about government. The chapter ends by considering the implications of the findings for the health of Canadian democracy. Government offices can serve as sites of political learning, but experiences with essential public services may also impart lessons about politics. Chapter 10 focuses on people’s experiences with the healthcare system. The health-care system was chosen because health is likely to loom large in people’s lives and because health accounts for such a large proportion of total government spending. Two questions are addressed. The first asks how people’s interactions with service providers and their satisfaction with the treatment they received influence their overall evaluations of the state of the health-care system. Here, the focus is on whether people draw larger lessons about the system from the way that they are treated when they visit a doctor’s office or spend time in hospital. The second question asks whether people who evaluate the overall state of the health-care system more negatively exhibit lower levels of political support. Are they less satisfied with the overall performance of their provincial government? Does frustration with the state of the health-care system have spillover effects on their confidence in political institutions? Are they more likely to subscribe to negative stereotypes of politics and politicians? Given that health is a basic human need, we can expect shortcomings in the delivery of health-care to foster disillusionment with politics and politicians. Dissatisfied users will be more likely to think that politics is corrupt and populated with self-serving politicians who engage in pointless squabbling and are willing to say anything to get elected. The final chapter reviews the main findings and reflects on their implications for understanding unequal participation in politics. Key lessons for the design and administration of programs are highlighted.

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Some possible limitations of the research design are addressed, and a number of suggestions are made for advancing research on policy feedback effects in Canada and beyond. Providing an in-depth examination of how experiences with government bureaucracies influence Canadians’ propensity to participate in politics is breaking new ground. This book brings together scholarship on political behaviour and public policy, fields that are all too often treated in isolation from one another. It does so to address a critically important issue: unequal participation in the country’s political life. Understanding why some people participate in politics while others are politically quiescent is critical when it comes to assessing Canada’s democratic performance. Effective democracies require active, engaged citizens (Barber 1984; Pateman 1970). Studies of political participation can tell us who is a part of our political life and who is left out; whose voices are most likely to be heard and whose may be ignored. These findings, in turn, have implications for the sorts of policies that governments craft. Policy-makers and program administrators can also benefit from learning more about clients’ experiences with public programs. As Lipsky (2010) has observed, “The decisions of street-level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they invent to cope with uncertainties and work pressures, effectively become the public policies they carry out … Public policy is not best understood as made in legislatures or top-floor suites of high-ranking administrators … To the mix of places where policies are made, one must add the crowded offices and daily encounters of street-level workers” (xiii). The chapters that follow can also provide insight into problems like the non-take-up of benefits and nonclaiming. Finally, some public administration scholars have suggested that performance measurement should take account of the impact of programs on citizenship outcomes such as political participation (Wichowsky and Moynihan 2008). A first step is to demonstrate that public programs in Canada do have feedback effects. This book’s findings also have important implications for debates about the welfare state. “New paternalists” such as Mead (1997) have argued that welfare reinforces dependence and a lack of self-discipline and thereby leads welfare recipients to shirk their civic obligations. Contrary to what we might term the “quiescence hypothesis,” though, policy feedback scholars argue that it is the design of welfare programs and the way that they are administered, rather than dependence upon

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them, that fosters political passivity. As Mettler and Soss (2004) have argued, “Government policies can play a crucial role in … shaping the things publics believe and want, the way citizens view themselves and others, and how they understand and act toward the political system” (55). From this perspective, stigmatizing programs convey negative messages about politics that are reinforced by demeaning treatment at the hands of street-level bureaucrats. This, at least, is the conclusion of studies of policy feedback in the United States. Whether similar findings hold in Canada is what this book sets out to investigate.

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2 Policy Feedback and Mass Political Behaviour

The notion that “policies produce politics” (Pierson 1993, 595) is at the heart of the concept of policy feedback. This seemingly simple notion opens up many possible research directions. As a result, policy feedback research comes in many varieties (see Béland and Schlager 2019). The term originated with Theda Skocpol (1992). She used it to describe the ways in which “policies, once enacted, restructure subsequent political processes” (58). Historical institutionalists like Skocpol typically concentrate their attention on the elite-level politics of bureaucrats, politicians, and interest groups. Other scholars have focused on the mass level, investigating how the design of public policies and the nature of welfare state regimes influence the attitudes and behaviour of the public. This book is in the same tradition. It builds on the work of scholars who have focused more specifically on the resource and interpretative effects of program participation on clients’ political and civic engagement. Their work has sought to understand how government programs influence citizens’ sense of political agency, their perceptions of government responsiveness, and their propensity to engage in political and civic activities. Two essays, both published in 1993, provided an important impetus for this line of research. In an influential essay, Pierson (1993) urged political scientists to pay more attention to policy feedback effects on the public at large. His essay highlighted two important potential effects. First, policies can be sources of material resources and incentives for political action. Receipt of benefits has the potential to compensate for factors like a low income or lack of education that can depress political participation. At the same time, benefiting from government programs can be

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a spur to political action. Recipients of government benefits may have a greater appreciation of the role of government in their daily lives. This recognition of the personal relevance of politics may motivate them to be more politically active. Program beneficiaries also have incentives to participate in politics in order to protect or enhance the programs upon which they rely. Second, Pierson argued, policies have interpretive effects. By interpretive effects, he meant “the impact of policies on the cognitive processes of social actors” (610). From this perspective, policies can serve as sources of information for citizens, imparting meaning and providing cues that enhance their awareness of what governments are actually doing. A key point is that the informational content of policies varies as a function of policy design: “Policies can either illuminate or obscure the role of decision makers” (623). For Pierson, two conditions are important in this regard: visibility and traceability. In other words, the benefits must be visible, and they must be traceable to government action. The greater the visibility and the traceability, the greater the mobilizing effects will be. Schneider and Ingram (1993) fleshed out the notion of interpretive effects in a second influential essay. Their interest lay in the consequences of the social constructions of target populations. By social constructions they meant cultural stereotypes of groups that are the target of public policies. Their key insight is that these cultural stereotypes help to shape the design of public programs, becoming “embedded in policy as messages that are absorbed by citizens and affect their orientations and participation patterns. Policy sends messages about what government is supposed to do, which citizens are deserving (and which not), and what kinds of attitudes and participatory patterns are appropriate in a democratic society” (334). The key point is that the messages conveyed to target populations are likely to be very different depending on the population. This is especially true of the messages that are imparted through citizens’ personal experiences with government bureaucracies. Schneider and Ingram contrast the experiences of advantaged and disadvantaged groups. “Advantaged groups” are often the target of outreach on the part of government agencies whereas “dependents” have to press their own claims. While the former groups are viewed as clients, the latter claimants are apt to be treated as objects and stigmatized as undeserving – or deserving, at best, pity. Their disparate experiences mean that the two groups are likely to absorb very

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different messages about government responsiveness and accountability. The “advantaged” learn that governments are responsive and can be held accountable, and that it is worth their while to get politically involved because “the game can be won within the rules” (341). The “dependents” are likely to internalize the very opposite message: that they are not even players and “the game of politics is a bureaucratic game where they wait in line and eventually get what others want them to have” (342). As a result, Schneider and Ingram argue, dependents are much less likely to become politically active in order to change policies that are ineffective or that have negative effects. Dependents will typically only interact with government in their role as claimants. According to Schneider and Ingram, the messages absorbed by dependents can help to explain why those who have the most to gain from being politically active are often the least likely to participate in politics. They “fail to mobilize or to object to the distribution of benefits and burdens because they have been stigmatized and labeled by the policy process itself. They buy into the ideas that their problems are not public problems, that the goals that would be most important for them are not the most important for the public interest, and that government and policy are not remedies for them. They do not see themselves as legitimate or effective in the public arena” (344). Empirical studies have built on these pioneering theoretical contributions. Campbell (2002, 2003) found strong evidence of resource effects when she studied the impact of Social Security on the political participation of senior citizens in the United States. Indeed, she claims that Social Security helped to refashion American seniors who went from being the least politically active to being the most politically active group (Campbell 2012). Low-income beneficiaries were especially affected. This evidence is particularly compelling because people with higher incomes are typically more active in politics than people with low incomes. In the case of Social Security–based activity, the pattern is the very reverse. Campbell found that low-income seniors were more likely than their high-income counterparts to have complained to an elected official about Social Security payments, factored in a candidate’s position on Social Security when deciding how to vote, or been motivated to make a campaign contribution because of concern about Social Security payments. Campbell attributes this to the visibility of the program and to the greater dependence of low-income seniors on the program to meet their basic needs. In fact, for some it meant

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the difference between having to continue working and being able to retire, which also meant more time for political activity. Having a greater material stake in the program is one reason why low-income seniors were more likely to mobilize around the issue. The other reason, Campbell argues, is that the program is contributory, and so “no welfare stigma or moral bar discourages political activism on the issue, as is the case with other government programs benefiting low-income individuals” (2002, 565). Note, though, that the positive effects are confined to Social Security–oriented participation. Campbell (2003) went on to analyze both the resource and the interpretive effects of Medicare as well as Social Security. She concludes that participation in Medicare – and Social Security – served to enhance the political engagement of senior citizens by providing them with material resources and by increasing their perceived stake in the political process. As a result, senior citizens were able to mobilize successfully when these programs were threatened. Campbell (2011) cites the role of Medicare in creating a constituency that came out in opposition to President Obama’s health-care reforms. Meanwhile, the interpretive effects of Medicare and Social Security were manifested in seniors’ sense that they were entitled to their benefits by virtue of their payroll tax contributions (Campbell 2003). Mettler (2002, 2005) expanded upon Pierson’s arguments to develop a model of how features of program design have both resource and interpretive effects on political activity. She applied this model to experiences with the G.I. Bill in the United States. Veterans who had taken advantage of the bill’s education and training benefits were significantly more likely to belong to a civic organization and to participate in politics, even controlling for their level of educational attainment, their family’s standard of living, and their parents’ civic involvement. She concludes that the bill’s generous educational benefits enhanced veterans’ capacity for political activity and produced a sense of civic obligation, and that the bill’s administrative rules and procedures (which did not involve any means testing or close scrutiny of veterans’ lives and circumstances) were conducive to the development of a civic predisposition. These program design features sent veterans a very positive message: their service was both appreciated and rewarded. As a result, many veterans were much more politically active throughout their lives than they might otherwise have been (Mettler and Welch 2004).

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Soss’s (1999, 2002, 2005) political learning approach builds on Schneider and Ingram’s (1993, 1997) work. He argues that welfare programs should be viewed as “sites of adult political learning” (1999, 364). His work focuses on how program design influences claimants’ experiences with welfare bureaucracies and the lessons about government that those experiences impart. He observes that “legislatures may host more dramatic political activities, but the police station, the motor vehicles office, and the Internal Revenue Service are more likely to supply citizens with lessons about government that ring with the truth of first-hand experience” (1999, 376). The key point is that the lessons that are conveyed will vary depending on the design of the program in question. Program design matters because it is likely to affect the sorts of interactions that people have with “street-level bureaucrats” (Lipsky 2010). People are apt to generalize these experiences to government and politics because “in the eyes of clients, government exists as a single entity” (Soss 2005, 309). Thus, experiences accessing government services and programs can influence whether people withdraw from political and civic life or become more actively engaged. If their everyday encounters with government bureaucracy are negative, they may conclude that government writ large is unresponsive and decide that it is simply not worth their while to be politically active: “Welfare programs provide many clients with their most direct connection to a government institution. For these citizens, the welfare agency serves as a proximate and reliable source of information about how government works. Client experiences provide a handy indicator of whether demands on government can be effective” (2005, 312). Clients’ experiences with government bureaucracies will, of course, vary, and the policy feedback effects can be expected to vary accordingly. The nature of clients’ experiences is likely to depend on the type of program. The first and most obvious distinction is whether or not a program is means-tested. While their study was not framed in terms of feedback effects, Verba and his colleagues (1995) provided evidence that the distinction between means-tested and non-means-tested benefits is consequential when it comes to political activity. Using survey data, they found that, in contrast to those who received non-meanstested benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, or veterans’ benefits, recipients1 of means-tested benefits such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (A F DC ), Medicaid, Food Stamps, or subsidized

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housing were much less politically active than the American public at large. They were significantly less likely to vote, work on a campaign, make a contribution to a campaign, or contact a public official; they were also much less likely to take part in a protest or be active in the community.2 As the authors observe, the implication is that “those who would be most in need of government response – because they are dependent on government programs – are the least likely to make themselves visible to the government” (210). These same recipients were also much less likely to have taken part in activities directly related to these social programs such as taking the program into account when considering how to vote or making a campaign contribution, contacting an official to make a complaint about the program, or belonging to an organization associated with the benefit. On closer examination, the authors found that only recipients with no college education were politically inactive. Nonetheless, it remained the case that “the government hears more from those on some programs than on others, and the ones it hears from are the more advantaged citizens” (219). Interestingly, when they were politically active, recipients of meanstested benefits were more likely than nonrecipients to mention government benefits and other issues relating to basic human needs, such as unemployment, housing, and health when asked what led them to political activity (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). This finding lends weight to the notion that receipt of benefits can increase the perceived stake in politics. However, recipients’ political activity was narrowly focused on these issues. Soss (1999, 2002, 2005) provides a deeper analysis of the impact of the type of program. Drawing on in-depth interviews with welfare claimants and direct observation in welfare office waiting rooms, he contrasts the experiences of participants in what was then America’s main public assistance program (Aid to Families with Dependent Children)3 with those of participants in a social insurance program (Social Security Disability Insurance). Unlike the latter, AFDC clients had to meet with a caseworker, who had a good deal of discretionary power over them. Their encounters often left them feeling vulnerable or even humiliated. These feelings were apt to translate into more negative perceptions of government responsiveness and lack of faith in the effectiveness of political action: “When they think about whether their own political demands can be effective, civics-book images of democracy pale next to vivid impressions of how welfare agencies

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respond to clients” (1999, 376). These interpretive effects help to explain why, despite their stake in the policy process, welfare recipients in the United States are “an especially quiescent group” (1999, 363). The experiences of participants in the social insurance program, by contrast, proved to be more positive, and these positive experiences were reflected in a greater likelihood of turning out to vote. Thus, “treatment and responsiveness in the welfare system are not administrative sidebars to democratic governance. They are, in their own right, critical measures of what citizenship means in practice” (2005, 296). Mettler and Stonecash (2008) add to the weight of evidence about the feedback effects of means-tested programs in the United States by analyzing the cumulative effects of firsthand experiences with social programs on recipients’ turnout to vote. They find that the more means-tested programs Americans have used across their lifetimes, the less likely they are to vote, other things being equal. This is especially true of welfare recipients and food stamp recipients. The pattern is the very opposite in the case of beneficiaries of non-means-tested programs: the more such programs they have used, the higher their turnout to vote. Indeed, users of multiple programs are more likely to vote than nonusers. The authors conclude that “those who have accumulated many experiences of inclusive programs that treat them with dignity and respect have likely gained a stronger sense of membership as citizens and greater confidence that the political system is responsive to people like them … Conversely, those who have time and again experienced treatment in a program administered in a stigmatizing manner may have become conditioned to believe that their voices do not matter” (289–90). A study of young adults in Minnesota was able to use a particularly strong research design to compare the effects of means-tested and non-means-tested benefits (Swartz et al. 2009). The use of a longitudinal survey made it possible to assess the extent to which receipt of benefits in 1996 predicted voting in 2000. Importantly, the authors were able to control for voting in 1994. In effect, their analysis is able to show whether receiving benefits changed the probability of voting in 2000 compared with 1994. They find that recipients of benefits such as A F D C or Food Stamps were less likely to vote than nonrecipients, whereas recipients of non-means-tested benefits such as unemployment insurance, Social Security Disability Insurance, and veterans’ benefits were as likely to vote as their counterparts who did not receive any government benefits at all.

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Once controls were introduced for social background, though, similar effects were not found for volunteering or for indicators of external political efficacy such as the perceived effectiveness of elections and whether talking to public officials makes a difference. Rather than focusing on the recipients themselves, Barnes and Hope (2017) look at the effect of living in a household receiving meanstested benefits – Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (T A N F ), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (W I C ), public housing, Section 8 housing, Medicaid, or Food Stamps – on the political participation of adolescents and young adults aged fifteen to twenty-five in the United States. They find that young people from households that have received public assistance are less likely to be politically active than young people from households that have never received such assistance. They attribute this to political socialization: these young people are more likely to have parents who are uninterested in politics and who do not vote. Thus, the demobilizing effects of program participation are passed on from one generation to the next. Most of the research in the United States comparing the feedback effects of means-tested and non-means-tested programs has looked at federal programs. Sharp (2009) switches the focus to the local level to see whether parallel effects can be found. In contrast to much of the literature, she expands the definition of experience with welfare to include people whose friends had received welfare, since “policy feedback effects can ripple through the friendship networks of recipients” (190). She finds that recipients and friends of recipients are less likely to have worked on a community project if they live in counties where the local government is more heavily involved in means-tested programs (as indicated by spending). However, the converse does not hold: greater local government involvement in non-means-tested programs is not associated with a greater likelihood of working on a community project. Sharp argues that heavy county government involvement in means-tested programs has a negative effect because county governments effectively become “agents for conveying stigmatizing and demeaning messages to recipients” (185). When she used a broader measure of civic participation, the finding of diminished activity was replicated for those who had experienced welfare, but now there was a participation-enhancing effect when spending on non-means-tested programs was higher. However, greater participation did not extend to those who had experience of welfare, suggesting

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that “the chilling effect of means-tested programs trumps the mobilizing effects of universal programs” (189). This distinction between means-tested and non-means-tested programs is clearly important in the United States, but it may be too blunt to capture the impact of program design. Indeed, there is evidence that the distinction obscures important differences among means-tested programs. When Swartz and her colleagues (2009) interviewed former welfare recipients, they learned that young Minnesota mothers who had participated in a welfare education program that provided subsidized child care while they were in school and for two years after they found a job had become more politically active. Specific features of program design can play an important role in differentiating people’s experiences with government programs. As a result, programs targeted at low-income populations are not necessarily associated with disempowering experiences. Mettler and Stonecash (2008), for example, report that participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children in the United States are as likely to vote as nonbeneficiaries, even though the program is means-tested. Bruch, Ferree, and Soss (2010) go further. They maintain that means-tested programs can actually have positive effects on political engagement. What matters, they argue, is not whether a program is means-tested but how it is structured. Using data from the longitudinal Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, they examine the policy feedback effects of three means-tested public assistance programs in the United States that all target people with low incomes but have different types of authority structures. They contrast users of the paternalistically structured TANF program (colloquially known as welfare) with clients of Head Start (a preschool and family support program for low-income families), which is structured according to more democratic principles and encourages parental involvement, and find that the latter are more likely to vote, to take part in a political protest or to participate in a politically oriented group, and to belong to civic organizations. Similarly, housing assistance clients are more likely to vote and to engage in the other forms of political activity (but not civic activity) than clients of TANF. Importantly, these results hold net of selection bias. In other words, the differences cannot be explained by differences in social background characteristics or experiences of marginality (such as alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and material hardships) between nonclaimants and those who claim welfare. As

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the authors note, though, it is not clear whether the observed effects generalize beyond the parents of very young children who comprised the Fragile Families sample and whether the effects reflect differences in recipients’ experiences. The survey did not ask about program experiences, and so the effects of the programs’ authority structures could only be inferred. Further evidence of the importance of program design comes from Watson’s (2015) study of the effects of “welfare conditionality” in the United Kingdom. Here, the key distinction is between rights-based benefits and conditional entitlements. Conditional entitlements are contingent on recipients agreeing to meet various obligations including the obligation to take part in job-search-related activities and workfare. Service providers have more discretion in administering conditional benefits, and recipients are subject to closer supervision and face the threat of having their benefits reduced, denied, or terminated. Watson (2015) argues that these characteristics all serve to dampen political and civic engagement. She uses panel data from the United Kingdom, which enable her to compare the same individuals before and after they experience workfare requirements. She finds that “welfare conditionality” has a negative effect overall on interest in politics, political efficacy, voting, and involvement in civic organizations. However, when she compares recipients of the contributory incapacity benefit and recipients of the means-tested lone parent benefit, she finds that the negative effect of conditionality is confined to the latter. Among the former, the effect is mostly positive. She suggests that this is because caseworkers perceive people with disabilities as deserving, whereas recipients of the lone parent benefit are likely to be stigmatized. The visibility of programs may also matter. Mettler (2007, 2011) argues that the provision of benefits through the tax system serves to make the role of government less visible to citizens and thereby contributes to a dampening of political and civic engagement. Indeed, recipients may not even perceive them to be government benefits. Tax credits play a central role in shrouding the activities of what Mettler (2011) terms the “submerged state” or Howard (1999) calls the “hidden welfare state.” Recipients simply file a tax return and then receive their payment. Receipt of benefits typically involves little contact with government agencies. “With the government’s role in promoting social opportunity so well hidden,” Mettler (2007, 648) asks, “might we be relinquishing means of conveying to citizens a sense of public life and

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our common bonds to one another as citizens?” She points in particular to the increasing number of tax breaks that have become available to upper-middle-class Americans at the same time as other more visible forms of social provision have been cut back. Schneider and Ingram (2019) are also highly critical of the use of tax breaks and credits, arguing that they are “the design of choice for allocating financial benefits to advantaged groups and are even more effective in protecting the positive social construction of advantaged groups” (220). They describe such designs as entailing deception because they keep the benefits – and the beneficiaries – hidden from view. Note, though, that benefits administered through the tax system are not exclusively targeted at the advantaged. The Earned Income Tax Credit in the United States and the Goods and Services Tax credit in Canada are both examples of means-tested benefits that are aimed at those with low to moderate incomes. The empirical evidence regarding the feedback effects of benefits administered through the tax system is mixed. Caputo (2010) found no significant differences in civic involvement in the United States between recipients of Medicaid and Food Stamps, which are both highly visible and means-tested, and the home mortgage deduction, which is neither. Regardless of the program, program participants devoted as much time as nonparticipants to civic engagement, and they were as likely to work with groups that aim to change social conditions and (with the exception of Medicaid recipients) to do unpaid volunteer work. Shanks-Booth and Mettler (2019) have explored the feedback effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (E IT C), a refundable means-tested tax credit that is targeted at working individuals and couples with low to moderate incomes. The results posed a paradox. EITC recipients were actually more politically active than people who had received neither E I T C nor welfare. They were more likely to be registered to vote and to vote in nonpresidential elections, and they took part in more political activities than nonrecipients whose socioeconomic status was comparable. On the other hand, they had a lower sense of external efficacy even than welfare recipients. Shanks-Booth and Mettler resolve this paradox by arguing that EITC recipients probably believed the government was unresponsive even before they started receiving benefits but were more politically active because working for pay gave them a sense of social inclusion. Overall, the results underline the effects of benefits that are less traceable to government:

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“The design and delivery of the E I T C , embedded in the tax code, shrouds government’s role in aiding people. It does not convey messages to them about government responsiveness, and therefore, fails to mitigate their strongly negative attitudes” (319). E I T C recipients were less likely than welfare recipients to believe that the government had helped them when they needed it. Quite apart from the feedback effects (or not) of receiving benefits through the tax system, there is still the issue of the feedback effects of nonclaiming if individuals are unaware of their eligibility for benefits administered through the tax system (Mettler and Soss 2004). For example, lack of awareness of the Goods and Services Tax credit may feed a perception on the part of low-income Canadians that the government is not doing enough to help meet the basic needs of people like themselves. Finally, Campbell (2012) points to the duration of benefits: “There is less incentive to engage in political activity around programs … of short duration” or programs where clients move “in and out of eligibility” (340). Having a material stake in a program is more likely to stimulate greater political activity if the resulting benefits are going to be enjoyed for many years. She cites Social Security and Medicare as two such programs since seniors receive them for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, people will typically only benefit from programs like student assistance and unemployment assistance for short periods of time, and so there is less incentive to mobilize to protect or enhance their benefits. Welfare, too, may be of short duration. Short duration may be one reason why the dependent coverage provision of the Affordable Care Act did not have positive feedback effects on political participation and internal political efficacy of the 19- to 25-year-olds who were its beneficiaries (Chattopadhyay 2017). The same program may have different effects on political engagement, depending upon beneficiaries’ experiences and how they interpret those experiences (Soss 2005). Even recipients of welfare can have positive experiences that can translate into greater political and civic engagement, confounding the gloomy prognoses of “new paternalists” such as Mead (1997). For example, based on their survey of the urban poor in the South Bronx, Lawless and Fox (2001) report that positive experiences with AFDC workers increased clients’ probability of voting and their probability of taking part in two or more extra-electoral activities, such as participating in a product boycott or making a complaint to a public official, by around 20 per cent.

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It is possible that even negative experiences are not necessarily disempowering. Indeed, they could have politicizing effects. Soss (1999) found that A F D C recipients actually had more confidence in their own ability to deal with government than nonrecipients who were otherwise similar to them. He attributes these enhanced feelings of personal political efficacy to the sense of personal political competence that clients developed as they learned how to deal with the A FDC bureaucracy. However, this heightened sense of political selfconfidence did not translate into an increased propensity to be politically active. There are other reasons, though, why program beneficiaries might be more apt to take a more active part in political and civic life than similarly situated nonbeneficiaries, even when – or perhaps especially when – they have negative experiences. Frustrating experiences trying to access a government program or to resolve a problem may foster a sense that the system is not working as it should. This, in turn, may enhance the personal salience of what goes on in politics. In addition to creating material incentives to be politically active, welfare programs, as noted above, can be a source of politically relevant resources. With the daily struggle to get by at least somewhat alleviated by the receipt of benefits, program participants may have more time and energy to be active in political and civic life than they otherwise would. Moreover, they may develop politically relevant skills as they learn to navigate an unfriendly system. The bulk of the research on feedback effects on political and civic engagement has been conducted in the United States,4 and most of this research has focused on political activity, political efficacy, and civic involvement. A notable exception is Kumlin’s (2004) in-depth investigation of feedback effects on satisfaction with democracy and trust in government.5 His study shows that personal experiences with the welfare state matter in Sweden, too. Indeed, he concludes that personal welfare state experiences matter more than personal economic experiences: “Personal welfare state experiences are political in a way that personal economic experiences are not” (12). It is much easier to attribute responsibility to the government for the performance of social welfare programs than it is for one’s own material circumstances. Kumlin conceptualizes welfare state experiences in terms of three aspects. The first is self-interest. From this perspective what matters is how much a person benefits from welfare state services. Kumlin predicts that the more services used and benefits received, the more

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positively people will evaluate politics and politicians. However, this outcome is contingent upon people’s perceptions of procedural justice and distributive justice. Procedural justice relates to whether personal experiences live up to expectations of polite, respectful, and efficient service, while distributive justice is concerned with whether people receive the help and service that they believe they have the right to expect. If people’s experiences fall short in either regard, they are more likely to develop negative attitudes toward the political system. It is difficult, though, to compare the Swedish findings with the American since Kumlin casts a much broader net in considering welfare state institutions to include schools, kindergartens, public transit, and leisure time and cultural activities. The following chapters explore program users’ day-to-day experiences with government agencies and investigate the impact of receipt of government benefits on their political orientations and propensity to be active in political and civic life. Building on the policy feedback literature, the chapters explore the effects of program design and visibility. The goal is to see how the feedback effects compare with those observed in American studies: Are contributory programs necessarily politically empowering and, perhaps more importantly, are paternalistic means-tested programs necessarily disempowering? Do negative experiences with service providers dampen or encourage political activity? To begin, though, it is important to know the extent to which potential beneficiaries are even aware of the programs that are available to them.

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3 How Aware Are People of Government Programs?

The core insight of one of the pioneering studies of policy feedback was that policies impart important messages to target groups about “their status as citizens and how they and people like themselves are likely to be treated by government … The messages indicate whether the problems of the target population are legitimate ones for government attention, what kind of game politics is … and who usually wins” (Schneider and Ingram 1993, 340). However, this presupposes that members of the target groups actually know about the government programs and services that are meant to benefit them. If they are unaware, they may well absorb negative messages about politics and wrongly conclude that governments are ignoring their needs and failing to address important social problems (Mortimore 2003). Lack of awareness of government programs and services may play an important role in limiting policy feedback effects. Indeed, the politically empowering effects of government programs discussed in the previous chapter may well be contingent on whether the intended beneficiaries even know that the programs exist. If they are unaware of the programs’ very existence, the resource and interpretive effects theorized by Pierson (1993, see chapter 2) will necessarily fail to materialize. From this perspective, knowledge of government programs and services represents a potentially important missing link in the relationship between public policy and political behaviour, enabling us to flesh out the processes that underpin policy feedback effects. Knowing which programs are widely known and which pass under the collective radar may also help us to understand why some programs have stronger feedback effects than others. Moreover, knowing who knows

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more and who knows less may provide insights into variations in feedback effects across individuals and social groups. Program knowledge also has important implications for the political process. Accountability is critical to the effective working of electoral democracy. Governments have an incentive to be responsive when they know that voters can hold them accountable on election day. However, voters can only hold governments to account if they know what their governments have been doing, and this means being aware of policies and programs. From the perspective of accountability, policies and programs are an important source of cues about government performance and how well governments have been responding to citizens’ needs (Pierson 1993). Those who make and administer public policies also need to know whether the necessary information is reaching the intended beneficiaries. Public awareness is critical to the effective implementation of public policy. If the target recipients are unaware of programs and services that could benefit them or are misinformed about their key features, the attainment of policy objectives will necessarily be impaired and the intended beneficiaries will fail to benefit. The problem of non-take-up of social benefits is widely recognized in the welfare state literature. Indeed, some scholars go so far as to argue that the underuse of programs is every bit as important as their abuse (van Oorschot 1991; Kayser and Frick 2000). First and foremost, it implies that there are flaws in the design or the implementation of the program. At the same time, non-take-up of social benefits contributes to poverty and can be a source of injustice if some target recipients are benefiting while others are not (Hernanz, Malherbet, and Pellizzari 2004). As Hernanz and her colleagues (2004) argue, “When the decision not to take-up a benefit is partly involuntary (i.e. when individuals are simply unaware of being entitled, or feel stigmatised when receiving benefits), this will generate disparities of treatment between individuals who should ex ante be treated equally by the welfare system. For example, if only the better-informed clients gain access to welfare, this may lead to marginalisation of those groups that would benefit the most from participation” (9). In the United States, low-income immigrants and other people with very low incomes proved to be the least likely to know about the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, even though they were among its target beneficiaries (Phillips 2001). Similarly, many welfare recipients with chronically ill children were unaware of their entitlement to

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health-related work exemptions and extensions to the five-year lifetime limit for receiving benefits (Smith, Wise, and Wampler 2002). In another study in the United States, elderly people’s limited knowledge of Medicare coverage meant that “the respondents who could least afford the consequences of poor [health insurance] purchase decisions or [were likely] to be victimized by questionable selling practices appeared to be the most vulnerable to these possibilities” (Lambert 1980, 444). Meanwhile, many parents whose children were potentially eligible for Medicaid were uninformed or misinformed about the eligibility rules (Stuber and Bradley 2005). This lack of awareness of government programs and benefits is not just a problem in the United States. A review of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRS D C) evaluation reports identified lack of knowledge about programs as the most important source of non-take-up, being mentioned in almost two-thirds of the reports (Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012). The authors quote the comment of one of the program managers interviewed for their study: “We often do good things but we are less good at communicating them. The government still has to learn at that level; it has to improve. People do not always know that a program exists” (46). In Canada, for example, the low utilization of the credit-splitting provisions of the Canada Pension Plan has been attributed to a combination of low public awareness and misinformation (Easton 2009). It has been suggested that non-take-up also makes it more difficult for policy-makers to make accurate assessments of the likely financial impact of program changes (Hernanz, Malherbet, and Pellizzari 2004). It is difficult to get accurate assessments of the extent of non-take-up, but estimates are between 20 and 60 per cent for social assistance and housing programs and between 20 and 40 per cent for unemployment compensation for those OECD countries for which information is available (Hernanz, Malherbet, and Pellizzari 2004; see also Storer and Van Audenrode 1995; Whelan 2009). Of course, lack of awareness is only one of several reasons why some programs are underused, but it is an important one nonetheless (Dahan and Nisan 2006; Daponte, Sanders, and Taylor 1999; Remler and Glied 2003). Indeed, nonknowledge has been identified as one of three broad types of non-take-up (Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012).1 There are good reasons, then, to investigate what people know about government services and programs. Yet political scientists have paid surprisingly little attention to this type of knowledge, opting

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instead to ask about the names and roles of prominent politicians, the positions taken by candidates and political parties, the rules governing political institutions, and so on. Some scholars have been critical of the conventional approach to measuring political knowledge, arguing that the questions have an elite bias (Lupia 2006) and embody too narrow a vision of politics (Norris 2000). Feminist scholars, in particular, have been critical of political knowledge questions that implicitly limit the scope of politics to the electoral and legislative arenas and fail to query citizens about those aspects of politics that impinge more directly on their daily lives (Smiley 1999). They have argued that we should assess people’s political knowledge by asking them about government programs and services that affect their wellbeing and that of their families. Similarly, Norris (2000) has argued that people “may need practical information about the health risks from contaminated foods, their welfare rights at benefits offices, or how they can claim legal redress for grievances” (213). Of course, these critiques do not negate the importance of assessing people’s knowledge of politics as traditionally measured, but they do highlight the need to take a more expansive approach to measuring political knowledge. However, the only study in Canada to examine this type of knowledge was limited to residents of Montreal and Toronto and focused on sex differences (see Stolle and Gidengil 2010; also Gidengil and Stolle 2012). This chapter broadens the scope to encompass residents of Canada’s most populous and diverse province. measuring program knowledge

The first wave of the policy feedback survey contained several questions designed to assess people’s awareness of various governmentfunded services and programs, both federal and provincial. The questions focused on five key areas: housing, law and protection, health, tax benefits, and employment (see figure 3.1). The housing question asked about the best place to go if someone wanted to contest a rent increase. Services relating to law and protection were addressed in three questions. The first question presented respondents with a hypothetical scenario, asking them about the best place to go if someone had experienced racial discrimination. Next, they were asked about the best place to go if they were aware of a child being abused. The third question captured awareness of Legal Aid by asking about the best place to go if someone had to go to court but was unable to

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pay for a lawyer. The health questions focused on the cost of screening tests under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (O H I P ). The types of tests that are routinely administered vary by age and sex. Accordingly, the survey used parallel questions. Women under fifty were asked about Pap tests while women aged fifty and over were asked a parallel question about mammograms. The parallel question for men under fifty asked about tests for sexually transmitted diseases, while men aged fifty and over were asked about screening for prostate cancer. Awareness of federal tax benefits was probed by asking respondents whether people with low incomes can qualify for a Goods and Services Tax (G ST) credit, a child tax benefit, and a public transit tax credit.2 Finally, the question about employment focused on awareness of the minimum wage in Ontario. The questions relating to housing, law and protection, health, and employment all used a multiple-choice format. Only the questions about tax benefits used a yes/no format. Multiple-choice questions avoid the risks associated with coding open-ended knowledge questions (Krosnick et al. 2008) and minimize the confounding effects of systematic differences in people’s propensity to guess (Mondak 2001). Formats such as true/false and either/or make it easier for people to guess the answer since they have a 50/50 chance of guessing the correct answer. In addition to compromising the reliability (and hence, the validity) of the questions (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1993), such formats can cause knowledge gaps to be systematically overstated if certain social groups have a disproportionate tendency to guess answers (Mondak and Anderson 2004). The literature is divided over whether “don’t know” responses should be actively discouraged (see Mondak 2001; Sturgis, Allum, and Smith 2008). Following Prior and Lupia (2008), the survey neither encouraged nor discouraged “don’t know” responses. There is no consensus in the literature regarding the prevalence of cheating on political knowledge questions in online surveys (Clifford and Jerit 2016), but we cannot rule out the possibility that some respondents may have looked up the answers. a snapshot of program knowledge

Along with food and water, shelter is one of the most basic human needs. Shelter also accounts for a significant portion of the typical household budget. According to the most recent figures, 42.3 per cent of Ontario households that rented their home paid 30 per cent or

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Housing If someone got a rent increase that was too high, where is the B E S T place to go to get it reduced? Please choose one answer City Hall The Landlord and Tenant Board The Ministry of Housing The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Don’t know Law and Protection If someone was refused an apartment and thought it was because of their racial background, where would be the BEST place to make a complaint? Please choose one answer. The Ombudsman of Ontario The Ministry of the Attorney General The Police The Ontario Human Rights Commission Don’t know If you knew of a child being abused, where would be the B E S T place to go? Please choose one answer. The school board or school Youth Justice Services Children’s Aid The Ministry of Children and Youth Don’t know If someone had to go to court and could not afford a lawyer, where would be the BEST place to go? Please choose one answer The Ombudsman of Ontario Legal Aid The Ministry of the Attorney General The Ontario Bar Association Don’t know Health [Women 50 and over] Under OHIP, is a mammogram: free, $20, $50, $80, don’t know? [Women under 50] Under OHIP, is a Pap smear test free, $20, $50, $80, don’t know? [Men 50 and over] Under OHIP, is a prostate exam free, $20, $50, $80, don’t know? [Men under 50] Under OHIP, is a test for sexually transmitted diseases (S T D s) free, $20, $50, $80, don’t know? Figure 3.1  Measuring program knowledge Note: The correct answers at the time of the survey, February 2016, are highlighted in bold.

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Program Knowledge (continued) Employment What is the minimum wage in Ontario? There is no minimum wage $9.45 $11.25 $13.15 $14.75 Don’t know Tax Benefits Can people with low incomes claim a: GST tax credit child tax benefit public transportation tax credit

yes, no, don’t know yes, no, don’t know yes, no, don’t know

Figure 3.1  (continued)

more of their total before-tax income on the costs of shelter (Statistics Canada 2013).3 A steep rent increase can wreak havoc with the household budget, especially for those living at or below the poverty line. It is important, then, that people know where to go to contest an unreasonably high increase in their rent. In Ontario, this is the Landlord and Tenant Board (L T B ), a quasi-judicial body mandated by the provincial government to resolve disputes between tenants and landlords. Overall, 72 per cent of those surveyed knew that the L T B was the best place to go to contest a rent increase that seemed too high (figure 3.2). Renters, of course, have much more need of this information than homeowners. Yet almost a quarter of renters (23 per cent) were unable to come up with the correct answer. People were somewhat better informed about the best place to lodge a complaint if someone was refused an apartment and thought it was because of their racial background. Almost four-fifths of the respondents selected the Ontario Human Rights Commission.4 Again, though, those who have the greatest need of this information were the least likely to know where to go. Finding affordable housing can be especially challenging for people who belong to a racialized minority, given the reluctance of many landlords to rent to people of colour (Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation 2009). However, only 71 per cent of visible minority respondents knew where to turn if a

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Housing Racial discrimination Child abuse Legal Aid Pap test (women under 50 Mammogram (women 50 and over) STDs (men under 50) Prostate (men 50 and over) Minimum wage 0%

20% Correct

40%

60%

Don't know

80%

100%

Incorrect

Figure 3.2  Knowledge of government-funded programs and services

landlord refused to rent them an apartment and they suspected it was because of the colour of their skin.5 The question about suspected child abuse elicited twice as many incorrect responses (20 per cent) as don’t knows. In Ontario, anyone who suspects that a child is being abused or neglected is required by law to report their suspicion directly to a Children’s Aid Society. The Child and Family Services Act gives the Children’s Aid Society the exclusive mandate to investigate cases of suspected abuse or neglect (Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services 2020e). However, only 71 per cent of those surveyed selected the Children’s Aid Society as the best place to report their suspicions. People did much better when it came to the best place to go if someone had to go to court and could not afford legal representation. Legal Aid Ontario was established by the provincial government in 1998 as an independent but publicly funded body with the mandate to promote access to justice. To qualify for free legal aid, in 2019 an individual’s annual gross income had to be less than $17,731; for a two-person family, the threshold was $31,917, rising to $48,173 for a family of five or more (Legal Aid Ontario 2020). Fully 90 per cent of respondents selected Legal Aid as the best place to go. Importantly, this figure was essentially the same regardless of income bracket, suggesting that the vast majority of those who might be most in need of free legal representation knew where to turn.

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There were substantial sex differences when it came to the costs of screening tests. Women aged fifty and over were almost twice as likely to know that mammograms are free under their provincial health plan than similarly aged men were to know that screening for prostate cancer is also free. The sex difference was fully forty-six percentage points. The gap was not quite as big among women and men aged under fifty but still huge at thirty-five points. The incidence of “don’t know” responses was atypically high for the question about the costs of screening for ST Ds. It might be tempting to take this as evidence of reluctance on men’s part to answer a question about a sensitive topic. However, this seems unlikely, given that older men were no more likely than younger men to know that screening tests are free of charge under O H I P . The finding that men were less likely than women to answer these health-related questions correctly, regardless of age, is consistent with previous research in Europe (Norris 2000) and Canada (Gidengil and Stolle 2012). Given that one Canadian man in seven will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime, making prostate cancer the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Canadian men (Canadian Cancer Society 2020), the lack of awareness among older men is troubling. With rates of S T D s in Canada rising since the late 1990s (Public Health Agency of Canada 2015), it is equally disturbing that barely half of men under fifty know that screening is available free of charge. This concern is compounded by the finding that fully 30 per cent of women aged eighteen to twentynine were unaware that the Pap test is free of charge, suggesting that they are not having regular gynecological check-ups given that a Pap test is a routine part of the examination. Three-quarters of those interviewed knew the minimum wage in Ontario, and hardly anyone mistakenly believed that there was no minimum wage. Still, even among those who were part of the paid workforce, fully 14 per cent either underestimated the amount or simply did not know. Most people turned out to be aware of the GST credit and the Child Benefit tax credit (see figure 3.3). The G S T credit is intended to help offset the cost of the tax on goods and services purchased by lowincome individuals and families. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) automatically determines whether someone is eligible based on their tax return. It is not surprising, then, that so many respondents knew about the credit since most of them had filed a return. Among those who had not filed a return in the previous year, only 69 per cent answered correctly. This raises concerns about whether there are

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GST credit

Child Benefit

Public transit credit

0%

10%

20%

30% Correct

40%

50%

Don't know

60%

70%

80%

90%

Incorrect

Figure 3.3  Knowledge of tax credits

people who are failing to benefit from the credit because their income is too low to be taxable. It is somewhat reassuring, then, that 89 per cent of those with household incomes of less than $25,000 gave the correct answer, but that still leaves one in ten who may be losing out. Similar concerns arise with the Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCT B), which was intended to help families with the cost of raising children under eighteen years of age. The Canada Child Benefit (CCB) replaced the C C TB on 1 July 2016. In both cases, people could only receive this benefit if they filed a tax return, even when they had no taxable income to report. Most respondents appeared to know about this tax benefit. Still, one in ten respondents with children under eighteen in the home were apparently unaware of the benefit. The greatest cause for concern when it comes to knowledge of tax benefits is the much smaller proportion of respondents who were aware of the public transit credit. This credit was intended to help reduce greenhouse emissions by encouraging use of public transit. It was based on the costs of eligible transit passes for individuals, their spouses or common-law partners, and children under the age of nineteen. The tax credit was phased out in the 2017 federal budget. Prime Minister Trudeau defended the elimination of the credit on the grounds (among others) of “extremely low take-up” (Global News 2017). The results presented here suggest that one reason for the low

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take-up may well have been a simple lack of awareness. Even in big cities, where respondents might be most likely to use public transit, only 65 per cent answered this question correctly. who knows more and who knows less?

Potential claimants’ social background characteristics have been identified as one of the three most important factors influencing take-up of social benefits in Canada, according to an H S R D C -commissioned report (Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012). One reason may be that awareness of government programs is associated with social background. Indeed, the report suggests that a university graduate is more likely to know about the availability of various government programs and services. Certainly, there is an abundant literature documenting the uneven distribution of political knowledge, as conventionally measured (see, for example, Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Gidengil et al. 2004). Older, affluent, university-educated men are typically much better informed about politics than younger, poorer women who have only a high school education or less. But is knowledge of government programs and services subject to similar social biases? And, critically, are those who are most likely to benefit from these programs and services the most likely to know about their existence? We have already seen some hints that this is not the case: people who belong to a visible minority are less likely to know where to lodge a complaint about discrimination; almost a quarter of renters do not know where to contest a rent increase. The question is whether these are isolated instances or examples of more widespread social biases. Providing an answer requires an overall measure of program knowledge. To this end, a simple additive scale has been constructed by summing the number of correct answers to the housing, law and protection, health, and employment questions. Overall, people were quite well informed (see figure 3.4). The median respondent answered five of the six questions correctly, and just over a quarter answered all six correctly. Very few respondents were unable to answer a single question correctly, and the vast majority had at least three correct answers.6 When it comes to who knows more and who knows less, there is a significant sex difference: men, on average, are less knowledgeable about government-funded programs and services than women are (see table 3.1). This is interesting in light of the long-standing gender

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40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

None

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

All

Figure 3.4  Number of correct responses to program knowledge questions

gap in political knowledge as conventionally measured. Numerous studies have shown that women know less than men when the questions embody a narrow conception that limits politics to electoral and governmental arenas (see, for example, Fraile 2014; Gidengil et al. 2004; Verba, Burns, and Schlozman 1997). However, when the questions relate to government-funded programs and services, the gender gap reverses. This reversal of the traditional knowledge gap mirrors the pattern uncovered by Stolle and Gidengil (2010) in their study of residents of Montreal and Toronto and suggests that their findings hold more generally.7 This reversal partly reflects the higher awareness among women that various screening tests are free of charge under their provincial health plans: 89 per cent of women answered correctly, compared with only 48 per cent of men. This result is not driven by any reluctance on the part of younger men to answer the somewhat more sensitive question about the cost of tests for sexually transmitted diseases. In fact, older men were equally uninformed regarding the cost of screening for prostate cancer. Moreover, a similar sex difference was apparent when Europeans were asked about the risks of skin cancer: men were significantly less aware of the risks than women (Norris 2000). The cost of screening tests was not the only question on which women outperformed men. Women were also significantly more likely

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Table 3.1 Social background characteristics and program knowledge Mean

Mean

Male

4.29

Income less than $35k

4.55

Female

4.83

Income $35k to less than $75k

4.55

Income $75k and over

4.64

No children under 18 at home

4.52

Has children under 18 at home

4.69

Aged under 30

4.20

Aged 30 to 44

4.47

Not married or living common law

4.52

Aged 45 to 59

4.70

Married or living common law

4.60

Aged 60 to 74

4.63

Aged 75 and over

4.43

Visible minority

4.35

Non-minority

4.61

Not working outside the home

4.52

Working outside the home

4.62

Less than high school

4.33

Completed high school

4.54

Foreign born

4.42

Some postsecondary

4.53

Canadian born

4.60

University graduate

4.66

Note: The maximum possible score is six. A row is shaded if the mean program knowledge score for the named category is significantly (p < .05) lower than the category with the highest score. For example, people who did not complete high school know significantly less than ­university graduates.

than men to know that the Children’s Aid Society is the best place to go if someone suspects a child is being abused. Only two-thirds of men were able to answer this question correctly, compared with threequarters of women. There were no significant sex differences, though, for the remaining questions. Still, women clearly perform better when they are asked political knowledge questions that relate more directly to their everyday lives. This is apparent when we compare their performance on conventional political knowledge questions. In addition to asking about government programs and services, the survey asked respondents to match photographs of prominent politicians with their political offices: premier of the province, mayor of Toronto, leader of the federal New Democratic Party, and the minister of immigration, citizenship and refugees (see chapter 5 for more information). Men outperformed

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women on all four questions, scoring half a point higher on average than women on the zero to four scale. It is not surprising that women do better when they are asked about government programs and services given their reliance on the state as both service providers and clients. As of December 2016, 38.9 per cent of employed women in Ontario were employed by the public sector, compared with only 16.7 per cent of employed men (Statistics Canada 2017b). At the same time, women still bear the main responsibility for caregiving (Moyser and Burlock 2018), and women are about four times as likely as men to be lone parents (Statistics Canada 2017c). Government programs and services can facilitate women’s caregiving activities. From this perspective, then, what is perhaps surprising is that women do not outperform men on more of the program knowledge questions. Having children under eighteen at home, though, was associated with greater awareness of government programs and services. This was partly driven by responses to the child-focused question: people with children in the home were more likely to know where to go to report suspected child abuse. These parents were also more likely to know that screening tests are free under their provincial health plan. Having children at home may make for more visits to the hospital or the doctor’s office where parents are exposed to information about screening tests. It is more difficult to see why the presence of children at home would be associated with greater awareness of the minimum wage. It bears emphasis, though, that none of these differences exceeded eight points. As for marital status, whether or not someone was married or living common law did not make a significant difference to their overall knowledge of government-funded programs and services. These respondents scored only a little higher than single respondents. This is interesting in light of research showing that information tends to flow through social networks (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995), and that marriage tends to enhance people’s opportunities to develop social ties (Erickson 2004). The same is true of working outside the home, but this, too, did not significantly increase awareness of government programs and services. Predictably, education has a significant association with program knowledge, but it was really only whether or not someone had finished high school that mattered. University graduates were a little better informed than high school graduates and those with some

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postsecondary education, but the differences fall short of conventional levels of statistical significance. Given that acquiring information requires cognitive skills, we might have expected a steeper education gradient, but people with less than a high school education were only somewhat less knowledgeable than those with higher levels of educational attainment. On the other hand, household income appears to be unrelated to knowledge about government programs and services. The scores of those with incomes of less than $25,000 were statistically indistinguishable from those earning $100,000 or more. The question about suspected child abuse was the only one to produce a significant difference, with higher-income earners being somewhat better informed. Still, that many of the lowest-income earners were apparently no more aware of programs and services targeted at people with low incomes than were higher-income earners is no cause for complacency. What did matter was age. There is a clear curvilinear relationship. Young adults are the least knowledgeable, on average. Program knowledge peaks in the forty-five to fifty-nine age groups but then falls off among older age groups. What explains this pattern is unclear. One possibility is that the middle aged are more likely to have (or recently had) children under eighteen at home. Another possibility is that this age group tends to have larger and more diverse social networks, which may serve as conduits for information about government services and programs. As Erickson (2004) observes, “Those in mid-life are active in many spheres of work, family, and social life, and are at their peak of opportunities to meet a wide range of people” (27). Visible minority respondents scored significantly lower on the measure of program knowledge than other respondents. In contrast to the differences discussed so far, there were significant knowledge gaps on all but one of the questions. The lone exception related to knowledge of the cost of screening tests. People belonging to visible minorities were less likely to know where to go to contest a rent increase and where to go if someone experienced discrimination when apartment hunting. These findings are especially disturbing in light of evidence of discrimination in housing against people of colour (Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation 2009). A similar concern arises for the lower levels of awareness of the minimum wage, given that racialized workers in Ontario are almost 50 per cent more likely than other workers to be employed in minimum-wage jobs (Block 2013). Foreign-born Canadians also received significantly lower scores on

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the measure of program knowledge. In their case, though, lower scores were driven by only two of the questions. Immigrants were less likely to know where to report suspected child abuse or where to turn in the case of discrimination. The lower overall scores among both visible minority and foreignborn respondents point to the necessity of sorting out which social background characteristics have independent effects on program knowledge. We have to ask whether immigrants score lower than the Canadian born because they are more likely to belong to a visible minority. This is just one possibility. Young people, for example, may be less aware of government programs and services because they are less likely to have children under eighteen at home. To identify which social background characteristics have independent effects, we need to turn to multivariate analysis and estimate a regression model.8 The results are clear (see table 3.2). Including both age and age squared makes it possible to assess whether the relationship between age and program knowledge is curvilinear, even controlling for other social background characteristics. This turns out to be the case: both age and age squared have significant but opposite-signed effects. This pattern does not simply reflect age differences in knowledge about the cost of screening tests. It continues to hold almost as strongly when the question about screening tests is dropped from the scale. Sex also continues to have a significant effect, even taking account of other social background characteristics. This is the case even if knowledge of the cost of screening tests is dropped from the scale, although the effect is a good deal weaker.9 Similarly, having a university degree and belonging to a visible minority both prove to have significant, independent effects. However, the effect of having children under eighteen at home just fails to achieve conventional levels of statistical significance. On the other hand, being foreign born falls well short of statistical significance. In other words, once we take account of whether someone belongs to a visible minority, being foreign born does not have an effect on knowledge of government programs and services. None of the observed effects are particularly large, but they are nonetheless potentially consequential when it comes to ensuring that the target recipients all have the requisite knowledge of the programs and services that are available to them. Turning to knowledge of tax benefits, just over half of the respondents gave the correct answers to all three of the questions, and just over a quarter were able to answer two of the three questions correctly

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Table 3.2 Impact of social background characteristics on program knowledge Female

0.59 (.06)

Children under 18 at home

0.12 (.07)

Married or common-law partner

0.04 (.06)

Working outside the home

0.07 (.07)

Completed high school

0.12 (.14)

Some postsecondary education

0.16 (.12)

University graduate

0.33 (.13)

Household income under $35,000

0.01 (.08)

Household income $75,000 or more

0.01 (.07)

Age

0.06 (.01)

Age squared

−0.00 (.00)

Belongs to a visible minority

−0.24 (.10)

Foreign-born

−0.07 (.09)

Constant Adjusted R-square Number of cases

2.61 (.31)   .09 1,885

Note: The column entries are unstandardized regression coefficients with robust standard errors shown in parentheses. The shaded entries are statistically ­significant at the p < .05 level.

(see figure 3.5). However, that still leaves a nontrivial number who apparently knew the correct answer to only one or none of the questions. Again, the critical question is whether there are systematic differences in the sorts of people who know less. To answer this question, a scale was created by summing the number of correct responses to the three questions about tax benefits. There are some striking differences when we compare the social distribution of knowledge of tax benefits with that of government programs and benefits. First, there is no sex difference when it comes to knowing about tax benefits: men and women have equivalent levels of knowledge (see table 3.3). Similarly, visible minority respondents had similar scores, on average, to other respondents (and so did foreign-born respondents). At the same time, new knowledge gaps emerge. People who were working outside the home were significantly better informed than those who were not working; in particular, they

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60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

None

One

Two

All

Figure 3.5  Number of correct responses to tax questions

were much more likely to know about the public transit credit. The gap on this question was fully twenty points. Moreover, an income gap appeared: those with household incomes under $35,000 were significantly less knowledgeable than those with incomes of $75,000 or more. True, the difference in scores was modest, but it is nonetheless of concern that those who potentially had the most to gain were not better informed. There is, of course, a correlation between people’s income and their level of educational attainment. There is a clear education gradient to knowledge of tax benefits. Notably, only 43 per cent of those who did not complete high school were aware of the public transit credit, compared with 66 per cent of university graduates, even though they were equally likely to have filed a tax return. In contrast to the GST credit, the Canada Revenue Agency did not automatically determine taxpayers’ eligibility for this credit. The onus was on the taxpayer to claim the amount. In other words, awareness was essential. Despite these differences, there were also some important parallels in the social distribution of both program knowledge and knowledge of tax benefits. Notably, there was once again a curvilinear relationship between age and knowledge. The low level of awareness among the oldest respondents is particularly concerning. The largest difference emerged for awareness of the public transit credit, which was known

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Table 3.3 Social background characteristics and knowledge of tax benefits Mean

Mean

Male

2.30

Income less than $35k

2.23

Female

2.26

Income $35k to less than $75k 2.31 Income $75k and over

2.40

Aged under 30

2.13

Aged 30 to 44

2.41

Not married or living common law 2.28

Aged 45 to 59

2.39

Married or living common law

Aged 60 to 74

2.29

Aged 75 and over

1.90

Visible minority

2.30

Non-minority

2.28

No children under 18 at home

2.22

Has children under 18 at home

2.40

2.28

Not working outside the home

2.16

Working outside the home

2.44

Less than high school

2.01

Completed high school

2.17

Foreign born

2.26

Some postsecondary

2.25

Canadian born

2.28

University graduate

2.40

Note: The maximum possible score is three. An entry is shaded if the mean program ­knowledge score for the named category is significantly (p < .05) lower than the category with the highest score. For example, people with low incomes know significantly less than people with high incomes.

to only 38 per cent of those aged seventy-five and over. Of course, this is the age group that is least likely to need a monthly or weekly transit pass, but significant gaps emerged on the other two tax benefit questions as well. The other similarity to the results for program knowledge relates to the presence of children. Once again, knowledge was higher among those with children under eighteen at home. It might be suspected that this was due to greater awareness of the child tax benefit, but these parents were also significantly more likely to know about the public transit credit. Once we move to a multivariate analysis to sort out which characteristics have independent effects on knowledge of tax benefits, the picture changes (see table 3.4).10 Most importantly, it now appears that household income does not have an independent effect. What

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Table 3.4 Impact of social background characteristics on knowledge of tax benefits Female Children under 18 at home Married or common-law partner

−0.02 (.04) 0.06 (.05) −0.05 (.05)

Working outside the home

0.09 (.05)

Completed high school

0.13 (.10)

Some postsecondary education

0.13 (.09)

University graduate

0.24 (.10)

Household income under $35,000

−0.06 (.06)

Household income $75,000 or more

−0.01 (.06)

Age

0.04 (.01)

Age squared

−0.00 (.00)

Belongs to a visible minority Foreign born

0.03 (.07) −0.01 (.06)

Filled out their own tax return

0.36 (.04)

Constant

1.09 (.23)

Adjusted R-square

.09

Number of cases

1,885

Note: The column entries are unstandardized regression coefficients with standard errors shown in parentheses. The shaded entries are statistically significant at the p < .05 level.

matters is education and, more particularly, whether someone has a university education. What also matters and, indeed, matters most is age. Once again, we see clear evidence of a significant curvilinear relationship. Knowledge of tax benefits increases with age until midlife and then tails off among the elderly. We might suspect that people in their thirties, forties, and fifties tend to be more knowledgeable because they are more likely to have children under eighteen at home. However, having children under eighteen at home does not have an effect once other social background characteristics are taken into account. The effect of working outside the home falls just short of conventional levels of statistical significance. Finally, many respondents (58 per cent) had someone else do their tax returns, which may have dampened their awareness of tax benefits. Those who filed their own returns were somewhat better informed about tax benefits, but the difference is not large.

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e n h a n c i n g fa m i l i a r i t y w i t h g o v e r n m e n t programs and services

Policy feedback effects are necessarily contingent on people’s awareness of government-funded programs and services. Public policies cannot be a source of resources that offset social disadvantage nor can they communicate positive messages about government or mobilize people to be politically active if target recipients are not even aware of the existence of programs and services. At the same time, accountability is weakened and governments have less incentive to be responsive when people lack awareness of what their governments are doing. Lack of awareness would matter less if knowledge of government programs and services was evenly distributed across the population. However, as we have seen, this is not the case. It is particularly concerning that those who may be most in need of government programs and services are not the most likely to know about them. Indeed, in some cases, they know less. These findings should be of concern to policy-makers and service providers. The literature on non-take-up of social benefits has highlighted the inadequate provision of information as one of the key reasons for the underuse of government programs and services (van Oorschot 1991). It is certainly not the only reason: the complexity of the rules governing eligibility and access, and fears of stigmatization on the part of potential recipients, also play important roles. Nonetheless, lack of awareness is a problem that can be fixed if there is a will. Of course, a cynic might respond that governments have little incentive to address non-take-up since “foregone benefits represent fiscal savings to the relevant government budget” (Kayser and Frick 2000, 4). However, assuming that such myopia is not pervasive, take-up can be improved by raising awareness of government programs and services. Most obviously, targeted awareness campaigns have an important role to play. For example, we have seen that people belonging to visible minorities seem to be less aware of various government-­funded programs and services (though not tax benefits). Promoting programs and services via ethnic media and through ethnic organizations could help enhance awareness in this demographic. Indeed, working with community organizations more generally may be a particularly effective way of reaching target recipients (Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012). We have also seen that older people know less about both

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government programs and services and various tax credits. Awareness could be increased by posting material prominently in doctors’ offices, seniors’ residences and day centres, and daycare centres as well as one-stop service centres such as Service Canada and Service Ontario. Advertisements on public transit could also enhance awareness. It is not enough simply to target more information at potential beneficiaries; given the relationship between education and knowledge documented above, a concerted effort has to be made to provide information that is easily understood. As one of the program managers interviewed for an H R S D C -commissioned study commented, “In addition, announcements and programs themselves are often very technical so that you easily get lost … It is especially problematic for illiterate persons and those people with a low level of education” (qtd in Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012, 46). Less obviously, the location of service points has a potential role to play if it facilitates interactions between those who know more and those who know less (Gidengil and Stolle 2012). Lowndes (2006) gives the example of prenatal care in the United Kingdom: “Women meeting in a pre-natal group … may vary significantly in relation to class or ethnicity. If they stay in touch after the birth of their babies, they may exchange information and contacts regarding future employment, child care, or health issues that cut across the assumptions and experience of any one social group” (222). We may be somewhat reassured given that people were relatively well informed about government programs, and that the social distribution of program knowledge was not more uneven. But what about people’s actual experiences accessing government programs? How do people find out about government programs? Does social background matter when it comes to the ease of getting information about programs? Do people report being treated respectfully by frontline service providers? How does their treatment leave them feeling about themselves? These and other questions are the subject of the next chapter.

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4 How Do Experiences with Government Programs and Services Vary?

i n f o r m at i o n c o s t s a n d s t i g m a

The last chapter discussed non-take-up of social benefits from the perspective of lack of awareness of their existence. This chapter switches the focus to nonclaiming and clients’ experiences with service providers. Nonclaiming occurs when someone is aware of a program but is deterred from making a claim by the subjective and/or objective costs (Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012). These costs take two main forms: information costs and stigma. The information costs of making a claim include the costs in time and energy of obtaining information about eligibility and the application process as well navigating a claiming process that might be lengthy and complex (Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012; Hernanz, Malherbet, and Pellizzari 2004). As Hernanz and her colleagues (2004) explain, “Gathering, understanding and mastering application procedures imply costs in terms of time and effort, which may induce agents to renounce if their expected gain is low, or if the procedure is too complex and disorganised” (18). The ease or difficulty of the claiming process emerges as the second most frequently cited source of non-take-up of social benefits in a review of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) evaluation reports, second only to lack of awareness of a program’s existence and knowledge of the program’s rules and application procedures (Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012). The non-take-up literature also frequently cites stigma as an influential factor (see, for example, Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012; Hernanz, Malherbet, and Pellizzari 2004). According to Baumberg

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(2016), benefits stigma “seems to be an endemic feature of most social security systems” (182). Stigma may be fostered by media portrayals and political rhetoric, as well as by societal attitudes. We only have to think about the images of “moochers” and “welfare queens” in the United States. However, feelings of stigmatization can also arise or be reinforced by the process of claiming benefits. Baumberg (2016) refers to this as “claims stigma,” which he attributes to “a combination of the lack of privacy involved (particularly in means tests and cohabitation tests), to the demeaning experience of long waits, and the feeling of being looked down on by suspicious staff.” He cites qualitative research suggesting that claims stigma is “the most powerfully-felt stigma of all based on treatment at the hands of street-level bureaucrats” (183). Of course, some programs are more stigmatizing than others. A key factor influencing the degree of stigma associated with claiming a benefit is whether the claimant is considered deserving (Baumberg 2016). From this perspective, we might expect people who receive disability benefits, for example, to be seen as more deserving than people receiving other forms of social assistance. More generally, means-tested programs that are targeted at specific groups would seem to be more likely to elicit feelings of stigma than universal programs that can be accessed regardless of income. As Hernanz and her colleagues (2004) observe, “At the administration level, the behaviour of welfare officials towards claimants may … be perceived as humiliating or stigmatising. This is particularly likely when an administration acts both as a welfare provider and as fraud controller” (21). Interestingly, “despite the importance of the claiming process, political scientists have said little about the factors that influence citizen demands on government programs” (Soss and Keiser 2006, 133). Soss and Keiser’s own research examines the impact of state environments on aggregate rates of welfare claiming in the United States, focusing on welfare programs that target people with disabilities. Here, we focus on people’s experiences with the claiming process as well as their experiences when contacting a government office and how these experiences differ depending on both the program and their own social background characteristics. The survey data do not allow us to identify people who were eligible for benefits but failed to file a claim. However, examining respondents’ experiences when applying for benefits and dealing with street-level bureaucrats can provide some insight into the likely sources of nonclaiming.

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an overview of the claiming process

Both information costs and feelings of stigma are likely to be affected by the design of programs and especially their administrative rules. Social assistance has the most demanding and intrusive application process. Demonstrating eligibility for both Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program requires applicants to provide detailed information and supporting documents, including · the exact total amount of income that they and their family

·

·

·

· ·

members aged eighteen and over receive, including pay stubs, tax returns, student loans, spousal support and child support, with the start date for each source of income; the exact total amount of assets and the date purchased for all family members, including cash, life insurance policies, savings bonds, and Registered Retirement Savings Plans; information about other assets owned by all family members (such as jewellery and other valuables, vehicles, and prepaid funerals), including the date they were purchased; the exact total amount paid for housing, including rent or ­mortgage payments, property taxes, utilities and heating, and home insurance premiums; employment information for family members, including the start date of employment; and exact or estimated child-care expenses and a copy of their Canada Child Tax Benefit statement for children under eighteen years of age (Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services 2020a).

If the applicant is living with another adult, he or she will also be required to explain how their finances are arranged and “the social and marriage-like aspects” of their relationship (Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services 2020b). Applicants also have to consent to the release of personal information relating to their family’s assets and to the disclosure of personal information about the family to any party for the purpose of determining or verifying eligibility. In short, the claiming process is both complex and intrusive. In addition, making an application to the Ontario Disability Support Program requires completion of the Disability Determination Package with an approved health professional. However, as noted above, we

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might expect that people claiming this type of social assistance would be seen as more deserving by caseworkers and would therefore have more positive experiences than people applying to or receiving assistance through Ontario Works. Ontario’s Affordable Housing Program is also means-tested. Management is delegated to forty-seven municipalities and district social services administration boards. Applicants still have to provide information on the family’s income and assets and consent to releasing and disclosing personal information. However, applicants only have to state their relationship with other persons who will be living in the accommodation as opposed to filling out a form to explain the nature of their cohabitation. Another key difference between social assistance and housing assistance is that there is no caseworker assigned to recipients. Like Ontario’s Affordable Housing Program, the means-testing for the Ontario Student Assistance Program entails much less intrusion into claimants’ private lives than either Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program. The application is made online, which should obviously not be an impediment for the vast majority of applicants, given their level of education, and the required documentation needs to be supplied only to the school’s financial aid office rather than to a government office. Applicants are automatically considered for all twenty-four Ontario Student Assistance Program grants, scholarships, and bursaries. Accordingly, the claiming process can be considered to be much less complex than applying for any form of social assistance. With the exception of the War Veterans Allowance, most veterans’ benefits, such as disability benefits, are not means-tested and are available regardless of income. In the case of the War Veterans Allowance, the means testing is based only on the veteran’s income tax return. A case manager is not assigned unless a veteran is in a rehabilitation program or suffering from a psychiatric illness. Applying for veterans’ benefits appears to be relatively straightforward and nonintrusive. Moreover, veterans ought to be seen as particularly deserving of government assistance. Applying for employment insurance (E I ) benefits requires less in the way of information and documentation than means-tested programs and does not require consent to release or disclose personal information. Applications for E I benefits must be made online. This can be done at home, at a Service Canada Centre, or at a public

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Internet access site in a library or similar location. The two latter options mean that lack of access to the Internet at home should not be an impediment. On the other hand, it does mean that more time and effort may be required to file an application and, more importantly, being required to file online complicates the application process for those who are not computer literate or lack basic literacy skills. Applicants are required to provide employment information, if applicable: · the names and addresses of all employers the applicant worked

for in the last fifty-two weeks, as well as the dates of employment and reasons for separation from these employers; · the applicant’s detailed version of the facts, if they quit or were dismissed from any job in the last fifty-two weeks; and · the dates (Sunday to Saturday) and earnings for each of their highest-paid weeks of insurable earnings in the last fifty-two weeks or since the start of their last E I claim, whichever is the shorter period (Government of Canada 2020). According to the Employment and Social Development Canada website, it takes about sixty minutes to complete the online application. The applicant also has to send all Records of Employment issued in the previous fifty-two weeks, unless their employers submit these electronically. The same information is required when applying for EI maternity benefits. In addition, the expected or actual date of birth of the child is required. Given that E I is a social insurance program, we should expect that claimants would be viewed as deserving. However, this may be less true of those who are claiming unemployment benefits. Eligibility for the Ontario Child Benefit is determined based on the previous year’s income tax return. The claimant’s spouse or commonlaw partner must also have filed a tax return. However, there is an additional step: parents must have registered their children for the federal Canada Child Benefit in order to receive the Ontario Child Benefit.1 Obtaining the Ontario Trillium Benefit also necessitates filing a personal income tax return, even if there is no income to report. The return must include a completed application for the Trillium Benefit and, if applicable, the Ontario Senior Homeowners’ Property Tax Grant. The Canada Revenue Agency determines eligibility based on the information provided in the return. Recipients have to apply

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every year in case their eligibility has changed. The process for obtaining payments from the Ontario Guaranteed Annual Income System (G A I N S ) is even more straightforward. The Ontario Ministry of Finance automatically reviews seniors’ eligibility for GAINS payments. There is no need to apply. All seniors who are currently receiving the federal Old Age Security (O A S) pension and the federal Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) and have lived in Ontario for one full year are automatically eligible. It is only necessary either to file a tax return or to complete a GI S application. The Ontario Drug Benefit Program is quasi-universal in that it covers all those aged sixty-five and over with a valid Ontario health card and is the simplest program to access.2 The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care sends all eligible seniors a letter three months before their sixty-fifth birthday reminding them that their coverage will soon begin. Once they have turned sixty-five, they simply have to show their Ontario health card to the pharmacist. However, lowincome seniors have to fill out a form in order to qualify for the Seniors Co-Payment Program, which exempts them from the deductible and reduces the co-payment. Forms are available at most of the province’s pharmacies as well as on the website of the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. Clients of Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program and their families are automatically enrolled. finding out about programs

In order to claim benefits, people first have to be aware of the programs’ existence. Respondents were asked how they had found out about each of the programs that they had used. The response options were a friend, neighbour, or family member; a co-worker or someone at work; a social worker; a hospital, doctor’s office, or health-care clinic; a community organization or local community centre; and a government website or government office. Respondents could also specify another source or indicate that they did not remember. The answers varied depending on the program.3 Overall, the most common source of information was a government office or a government website. This was the case for student assistance (27 per cent),4 veterans’ benefits (33 per cent), E I benefits (38 per cent), maternity benefits (40 per cent), the Trillium Benefit (40 per cent), the Ontario Child Benefit (46 per cent), and G A I N S (56 per cent). Clients of Ontario Works (22 per cent) and the Ontario Disability Support

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Program (15 per cent) as well as clients of Ontario’s Affordable Housing Program (13 per cent) were much less likely to have learned of the programs from a government office or government website. In the case of both Ontario Works (27 per cent) and Affordable Housing (35 per cent), the most common response was a friend, neighbour, or family member, whereas social workers (27 per cent) and hospitals, doctors, and medical clinics (26 per cent) were the most common sources of information about the Ontario Disability Support Program. Not surprisingly, respondents who had received E I benefits (23 per cent) or maternity benefits (26 per cent) were the most likely to cite a co-worker or someone at work. However, few users of the other programs had found out about the programs through contacts at work. Finally, and again not surprisingly, users of the Ontario Drug Benefit Program (32 per cent) were the most likely to have learned about the program through a hospital, doctor, or medical clinic. Regardless of the program, few users had found out about programs through community organizations or local community centres, despite their potential for informing eligible individuals about government programs and services (Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012). Interestingly, there were few sociodemographic differences when it came to the likelihood of finding out about a program from a government website or office. To explore this possibility, a binary variable was created with program users who had found out about at least one program from a government website or government office coded one and other program users coded zero. Thirty-seven per cent of program users reported finding out about at least one program this way. A regression analysis indicated that educational attainment made no difference. Among program users, people with less than a high school education were as likely as university graduates to have learned about at least one program from a government source. In the case of income, it was actually low-income users who were most likely to have found out about a program from a government office or website. One possibility is that once low-income earners have accessed a program, a caseworker or other service provider informs them of other programs for which they may be eligible. Unfortunately, it is not possible to explore whether or not this is the case with the available data. g e t t i n g p r o g r a m i n f o r m at i o n

It is one thing to find out about a program; it may be quite another to get information about the program. The survey asked program

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users how easy or difficult it had been to get information about each program that they had used. The response options were very easy, fairly easy, fairly difficult, or very difficult. Respondents could also indicate that they did not remember. Figure 4.1 shows how many users found it fairly difficult or very difficult to get information about each program. Veterans’ benefits top the list. Almost half (46 per cent) of recipients reported that it had been difficult to get information. Given the relatively small number of respondents who reported receiving veterans’ benefits (see chapter 1), we should be cautious about attaching too much weight to this finding. Nonetheless, it is cause for concern when people who have served their country are finding it difficult to get information about the benefits to which they may be entitled. Also cause for concern is that the Ontario Disability Support Program ranks second in terms of difficulty, with 41 per cent reporting that it had been difficult to get information about the program. For a variety of reasons, it may be more difficult for people suffering from a substantial physical or mental impairment to navigate a government website or to visit a government office. However, this does not negate the implication that more needs to be done to ensure that the target recipients can find out what they need to know. Recipients also reported difficulty in finding out about housing assistance. The decentralized nature of program administration may make it more difficult to track down information about housing assistance. Municipalities and district social services administration boards administer Ontario’s Affordable Housing Program and each has its own website. Not surprisingly, recipients of benefits administered through the tax system reported the least difficulty in learning about the benefits. It also appears to be relatively easy to get information about EI benefits, the Ontario drug program, and student assistance. In the case of student assistance, it is tempting to assume that recipients found it easier to get information because they have the requisite cognitive and information-processing skills. However, this explanation appears to be unfounded. This becomes clear when we create a binary variable coded one for program users who found it difficult to get information about at least one program. Overall, 21 per cent of program users experienced difficulty finding out about a government program. The figure was similar whether respondents were university graduates or had not completed high school. Immigrants were no more likely than the Canadian born to have had

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Veterans' benefits Disability Support Affordable Housing Ontario Works Student assistance Unemployment benefit Drug program Trillium Benefit Maternity benefit Child Benefit GAINS 0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Figure 4.1  Reported difficulty of obtaining program information Note: The percentages are all based on respondents who had used a given program, excluding those who did not remember how easy or difficult it was to find information about the program. Responses of fairly difficult and very ­difficult have been combined.

difficulty getting information about a program. Being a non-native speaker did not make a difference, either. Only two social background characteristics had significant effects. Those with incomes under $35,000 were more likely (28 per cent) to have found it difficult, though the difference was modest. Conversely, respondents age sixtyfive and over reported somewhat less difficulty (16 per cent). This is not surprising. As noted above, seniors in receipt of both the O A S and the GI S are automatically eligible for G AI N S and, in the case of the Ontario drug program for which all Ontario seniors are eligible, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care reminds seniors approaching age sixty-five that their coverage is about to begin. accessing programs

Looking at people’s experiences accessing programs can tell us something about the complexity of the process and the information costs, but it can also begin to tell us about recipients’ perceived treatment. The survey asked program users how easy or difficult it had been to access each program that they had used. Once again, the response

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options were very easy, fairly easy, fairly difficult, or very difficult. Respondents could also indicate that they did not remember. As we can see from figure 4.2, the ranking of programs for difficulty of access is very similar to the ranking of programs based on the difficulty of getting information. However, there is even more variation across programs in people’s experiences. Once again, disability support, housing assistance, and veterans’ benefits fill the top three spots, but now it is disability support that heads the list with over half of the recipients (55 per cent) responding that is was fairly difficult or very difficult to access the program. Once again, it is disturbing that recipients of disability support and veterans’ benefits are reporting the most difficulty. For veterans, this finding is unexpected given that most programs targeted at veterans are not means tested. It is also somewhat surprising that recipients of income support from Ontario Works (33 per cent) experienced less difficulty accessing the program than did recipients of housing assistance (44 per cent), given the much more demanding claiming process for the former. More predictably, beneficiaries generally reported that it was easy to access GAINS, as well as the Ontario Child Benefit, and the Trillium Benefit. As explained above, receipt of GAINS is automatic for eligible seniors, and all that is required to access the other two benefits is to complete a form when filing the income tax return and, in the case of the Ontario Child Benefit, register the child for the Canada Child Benefit. On the other hand, almost a quarter of recipients reported difficulty accessing unemployment benefits, even though the claiming process is not that demanding. Hernanz, Malherbet, and Pellizzari (2004) discuss the possible “economies of scale in acquiring information and becoming acquainted with the bureaucracy of the application process” (20). If economies of scale are relevant, we might expect people who had accessed multiple programs to report less difficulty. The logic is that applying for one program makes it easier for people to apply for other programs because the information costs are lower. In the process of applying, they may learn about other programs and services for which they are eligible, and importantly, they learn how to navigate the application process. There is some support for this notion of learning the ropes. Looking at users who had accessed five or more programs, 23 per cent had only experienced difficulty accessing one program. Nonetheless, almost as many (20 per cent) had experienced difficulty with three or more programs, suggesting that the economies of scale

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Disability Support Affordable Housing Veterans' benefits Ontario Works Unemployment benefit Student assistance Drug program Maternity benefit Trillium Benefit GAINS Child Benefit 0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Figure 4.2  Reported difficulty of accessing programs Note: The percentages are all based on respondents who had used a given program, excluding those who did not remember how easy or difficult it was to access the program. Responses of fairly difficult and very difficult have been combined.

may be modest. The comparable figures for users of four programs were 17 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively. Overall, 28 per cent of respondents reported having difficulty accessing at least one program. Neither being an immigrant nor being a non-native speaker was associated with greater difficulty accessing programs. This finding suggests that the information costs associated with accessing government programs do not serve as an informal barrier restricting immigrants’ access to benefits (on informal barriers, see Koning and Banting 2013). As we would expect, education influences people’s experiences accessing government programs. University graduates were significantly less likely to report difficulty. This is understandable since it is going to be easier for a university graduate to understand the eligibility criteria and to navigate the application process (Daigneault, Jacob, and Tereraho 2012). The education effect is modest, though. As was the case with getting program information, age and income both mattered. Seniors were significantly less likely (20 per cent) to say that they had experienced difficulty in accessing programs. Once again, this likely reflects the design of the two programs that are targeted at this demographic, namely, G AI N S and the Ontario Drug

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Benefit Program. In the case of income, fully 40 per cent of those with incomes of less than $35,000 had experienced difficulty. Since the effect of income was statistically significant, even controlling for education and other social background characteristics, the issue may not simply be related to information costs but also perhaps to how claimants felt they were treated. e x p e r i e n c e s c o n ta c t i n g g o v e r n m e n t o f f i c e s

The survey asked people how they were treated by street-level bureaucrats. Program users who had contacted a government office about a program were asked to rate the treatment they received in terms of helpfulness, speed, and respectfulness, and how it made them feel about themselves. All four ratings were on a zero to ten scale. In addition, all respondents who had contacted a Service Ontario or Service Canada centre were asked to rate their treatment on the same four scales. Clients of Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program were among the most likely to have contacted a government office, and that contact was also the most likely to have been face-toface (see figure 4.3). Clients of Ontario’s Affordable Housing Program were also more likely to have had face-to-face contact with service providers. The same was true of recipients of unemployment benefits and veterans’ benefits. In the case of unemployment benefits, the frequency of contact may be related to the requirement that recipients document their attempts to find employment. Predictably, recipients of benefits through the tax system and users of the Ontario drug program were the least likely to report in-person contact with a government office. Whether contact is face-to-face or not is potentially consequential when it comes to people’s perceptions of their treatment. We might surmise that being treated disrespectfully or left feeling badly about oneself has more of an impact when it happens in an interpersonal situation. Baumberg (2016) expects “less universal, less contributions-based, less generous, and more conditional benefits to be more stigmatised” (196). Consistent with this expectation, all four means-tested programs rank lowest when it comes to how clients felt about their treatment when they contacted a government office (see table 4.1). Means-tested benefits are likely to be more stigmatizing when receipt is tied to workfare requirements (Watson 2015). The literature on stigma also

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Ontario Works Disability Support Unemployment benefits Veterans' benefits Affordable Housing Maternity benefit Student assistance Drug program Child Benefit GAINS Trillium Benefit 0%

20%

40% In-Person Contact

60%

80%

Any Contact

Figure 4.3  Contact with government offices Note: Responses are based on all respondents who had used a given program.

suggests that people who are considered undeserving are more likely to experience “claims stigma” (Baumberg 2016). It is not surprising, then, that clients of Ontario Works were among the most likely to report that their treatment left them feeling badly about themselves. Two out of every five clients (39 per cent) gave a score of four or less on the zero- to ten-point scale when asked how their contact with a government office left them feeling. More surprising is that clients of the Ontario Disability Support Program were just as likely (38 per cent) to have been left feeling badly when contacting a government office about the program. If caseworkers or other service providers make judgments about deservingness, we would expect people suffering from a substantial physical or mental impairment to be considered more deserving of social assistance than people who are deemed capable of employment. These low scores raise questions about the behaviour of front-line bureaucrats, although, of course, we are dealing with recipients’ subjective feelings, which may be at odds with how they were actually treated. At the same time, that clients of both Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program were not as apt (23 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively) to give ratings of four or less when it came to being treated respectfully suggests that treatment at the hands of caseworkers and service providers is only part of the story. Program design and administrative rules can also contribute to a feeling of

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Table 4.1 Experiences contacting programs Program

Helpful

Respectful

Fast

Felt good

Mean treatment

Disability Support

6.31

6.35

5.53

5.22

5.72

Ontario Works

6.28

6.23

5.16

5.28

5.81

Ontario Student Assistance

6.21

6.58

5.30

5.80

5.98

Ontario Affordable Housing

6.81

6.90

5.11

6.07

6.22

Unemployment benefits

6.60

6.72

5.52

6.12

6.23

Veterans’ benefits

7.16

7.68

5.05

6.88

6.75

Ontario Drug Program

7.14

7.45

6.30

6.70

6.95

Ontario Child Benefit

7.37

7.41

6.25

6.88

6.94

Ontario Trillium Benefit

7.19

7.58

6.45

7.00

7.12

Maternity benefit

7.25

7.74

6.29

7.03

7.14

Ontario GA INS

7.68

8.02

7.06

7.67

7.74

Note: The first four column entries are mean scores on 0 to 10 scales. The final column is the mean score for the four dimensions of the contact experience.

being looked down upon. As Hernanz and her colleagues (2004) explain, “Programmes that require recipients to continuously identify themselves may generate more stigma than those that only require a one-off application and then transfer money directly to the recipients” (21). If so, the similarities in the rules governing both forms of social assistance may help to explain the low ratings. Moreover, recipients of student assistance and clients of the Ontario Affordable Housing Program – programs that involve less oversight and that do not assign caseworkers – felt somewhat better about their treatment. In light of Baumberg’s argument about contributions-based programs, it is surprising to see that recipients of unemployment benefits also gave lower scores across the board. From the perspective of deservingness, it is illuminating to compare these scores with the scores for maternity benefits. Recipients of maternity benefits (which are also contributions-based) scored their treatment almost a full

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point higher when it came to being treated with respect and left feeling good about themselves. One possible interpretation is that some service providers view recipients of unemployment benefits with suspicion, perhaps believing that they could find a job if they just tried harder. This tendency may reflect the conditionality that is built into the design of the program with continued eligibility being conditional on actively seeking employment. Providing benefits in the form of tax credits is seen as a way of reducing the stigma associated with social benefits (Baumberg 2016). As we saw in the previous chapter, one drawback of this form of social provision is that the target beneficiaries may not be aware of the existence of such benefits, especially if their income is too low to be taxable. However, when recipients contact a government office about these programs, their experiences tend to be quite positive. In particular, recipients report being treated with respect. As we have seen, recipients of veterans’ benefits experienced difficulty in accessing their benefits. When they contacted a government office about those benefits, they found the civil servants slow to respond. This delay may help to explain the reported difficulty in accessing their benefits. Apart from this, though, their reported treatment is comparable to that of recipients of tax benefits. The most common way that a person will have contact with service providers is through a Service Canada centre or, in Ontario, a Service Ontario centre. These service centres offer a single access point to a wide variety of federal and provincial services and benefits. Eightythree per cent of the survey respondents recalled contacting Service Canada or Service Ontario. Their experiences overall were quite positive, with an average score of 7.11 on a zero to ten scale across the four dimensions. Respondents generally rated their treatment as helpful (7.52), respectful (7.62), and leaving them feeling good about themselves (7.06). However, they were less positive, on average, when it came to speed (6.20). We can gain further insight into people’s perceptions of how clients are treated by looking at two experimental manipulations that were embedded in the second wave of the survey. Both took the form of short vignettes where the description of the client was manipulated. The first involved a person who had visited Service Ontario to replace his lost Ontario health card, while the second involved someone applying for assistance from Ontario Works (figure 4.4). There were two versions of each vignette. Which versions were presented

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Service Ontario Now we want to ask you about an individual who has lost his Ontario health card: James is 35 years old. He lives in [subsidized housing in][an upscale suburb of] a large Ontario city. He has lost his Ontario health card and has gone to his local Service Ontario centre to get his card replaced. How do you think James will be treated? Use any number between 0 and 10 where 0 means “very poorly” and 10 means “very well.” Ontario Works Now we want to ask you about an individual who is applying for social assistance: Duane is 35 years old. His parents immigrated from [Jamaica][Britain] when he was five years old. He was working as a supermarket clerk but has been without work for some time. His savings have run out and he has gone to his local Ontario Works office to apply for social assistance. How do you think Duane will be treated? Use any number between 0 and 10 where 0 means “very poorly” and 10 means “very well.” Figure 4.4  Vignettes for Service Ontario and Ontario Works Note: The text in square brackets was randomized.

to respondents was determined on a random basis. While the responses simply represent perceptions of how others might be treated, they are nonetheless revealing, especially when the respondent shares the same background as the person portrayed. The identity of the client had a significant effect on how respondents expected him to be treated by Service Ontario when getting his health card replaced. The average scores were significantly lower (p < .001) when James was described as living in subsidized housing (6.95) compared with when he was described as living in an upscale suburb (7.71). Surprisingly, though, the effect of the manipulation was statistically significant across low-, medium-, and higher-income groups. In other words, someone with a household income of $75,000 or more was just as likely as someone with a household income of less than $35,000 to believe that James would be treated less well if he lived in subsidized housing. Similarly, regardless of income, respondents thought James would be treated better when he resided in an upscale suburb.

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The Ontario Works vignette also yielded a surprising finding. The claimant’s identity did have a significant effect (p < .01), but it was the opposite of what we might have expected: the average scores were higher when Duane was described as a Jamaican immigrant (6.22) as opposed to a British immigrant (5.83). Equally surprising, the manipulation had almost no effect on respondents who belonged to a visible minority or were themselves immigrants. It was respondents who identified themselves as white who responded differently (p