If we go right back to the beginning of our discussion, Andrew was talking about how poverty among female-headed single-parent families has been almost halved over the last 10 years or so. Part of the explanation is improvements in child benefits; the other part is the increasing employment rate among women.
We often get criticized for not paying enough attention to the labour market from this side of things. I think it's really important, but it doesn't mean we should only focus on the labour market, by any means. All the work we're doing on this new architecture of adult benefits looks very much at not just employable people but so-called unemployable people--those with disabilities, people who are unable to work in any regular manner--and how we can improve support for them. We certainly are not advocating for a labour market policy over an income security policy; we think we need both.
On the child benefit, I disagree with you. We increased child benefits only for working poor families, and families on social assistance saw no real increase in their child benefits, because they used to get double the amount of child benefits compared to working poor families. It was patently unfair that one group of poor families got a certain amount of child benefits and another group of families got a different amount of child benefits. We wanted to take income benefits for kids out of welfare and put them into income-tested programs that treated all low-income families equally. So at the end of the day, whether you're working poor, welfare poor, or somewhere in between--as families often move in and out--you have a source of child benefits that is portable. It goes with you no matter what your labour market situation, and it treats all low-income families the same. We have been able to do that over the years, and now even families on social assistance are seeing a real increase in their child benefits thanks to continuing federal investment in child benefits.
