Canadian Social Research Newsletter

Canadian Social Research Newsletter
February 5, 2006

Welcome to the weekly Canadian Social Research Newsletter, a listing of the new links added to the Canadian Social Research Links website in the past week.

The e-mail version of this week's issue of the newsletter is going out to 1573 subscribers.
Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see some notes and a disclaimer.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

1. Canada's 2006 Election: A Chilling Echo of Bush's Republicans (Centre for Research on Globalisation) - February 4
2. Helping BC Income Assistance Recipients Upgrade Their Education - report (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - BC Office) - February 2006
3. What's New from the Centre of Excellence for Child Welfare - February 2006
4. Proceedings from the October 2005 National Conference on Caregiving (Social Development Canada) - January 2006
5. Report on Workshop Sessions on the Development of a Poverty Reduction Strategy (Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment) - October 2005
6. Progressive Bloggers (Canada)
7. National (Canadian)/International Events List 2006 (special days/weeks/months)
8. Federal Election Results
9. What's new from the Childcare Resource and Research Unit (University of Toronto) - February 3

International Content

10. Poverty Dispatch Digest : U.S. media coverage of social issues and programs --- February 2
11. What's new from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (U.S.) - January 2006
--- Pulling Apart : A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends
--- High-income households benefit most from capital gains and dividend tax cuts
--- Capital income has become more concentrated at the top
--- Growth in long-term income inequalities continues
12. Welfare Reform Green Paper - U.K. (Department for Work and Pensions) - January 24
13. The UK Commitment: Ending Child Poverty by 2020 (Center for Law and Social Policy - U.S.) - January 30
14. The Gender Wage Gap in Four Countries (Institute for the Study of Labor - Bonn, Germany) - January 2006

Have a great week!

Gilles Séguin
Canadian Social Research Links
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net

E-mail:
gilseg@rogers.com

1. Canada's 2006 Election: A Chilling Echo of Bush's Republicans - February 4
(Centre for Research on Globalisation)

Canada's 2006 Election: A Chilling Echo of Bush's Republicans
by Professor John Ryan
February 4, 2006
"The 2006 federal election has set the stage for a possible dismantling of Canada's distinctive social and economic fabric. The newly evolved Conservative Party, in many respects a chilling echo of the USA's Republican Party, is poised for a two-stage attack to reshape Canada in line with its Canadian version of America's neoconservative ideology."

Source:
Centre for Research on Globalisation
[ Version française : Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation ]
The Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) is an independent research and media group of writers, scholars and activists. It is a registered non profit organization in the province of Quebec, Canada.
- incl. news articles, commentary, background research and analysis on a broad range of issues, focussing on social, economic, strategic, geopolitical and environmental processes.

Related Links:

What's New? - Canadian, U.S. and international resources from Jan 2000 to the present.
Child Care in the News - media articles from January 2000 to the present
ISSUE files - theme pages, each filled with contextual information and links to further info
Links to child care sites in Canada and elsewhere
CRRU Publications - briefing notes, factsheets, occasional papers and other publications

Also from CRRU:

Towards a national system of early learning and child care
Regularly updated
NOTE: this is a large (and growing) collection that includes government and non-governmental reports, press releases, news articles and other documents dealing with the new federal-provincial-territorial arrangements for early learning and child care in Canada.

Current developments in Early Childhood Education and Care: Provinces and territories
Regularly updated

- Go to the Non-Governmental Early Learning and Child Care Links page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/ecd2.htm

10. Poverty Dispatch Digest :
U.S. media coverage of social issues and programs --- February 2

POVERTY DISPATCH Digest
Institute for Research on Poverty - U. of Wisconsin
This digest offers dozens of new links each week to full-text articles in the U.S. media (mostly daily newspapers) on poverty, poverty, welfare reform, child welfare, education, health, hunger, Medicare and Medicaid, and much more...
The Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers a free e-mail service that consists of an e-mail message sent to subscribers each Monday and Thursday, containing a dozen or so links to articles dealing with the areas mentioned above. The weekly Canadian Social Research Links Poverty Dispatch Digest is a compilation, available online, of the two dispatch e-mails for that week --- with the kind permission of IRP.

Here's the complete collection of U.S. media articles in this week's Poverty Dispatch Digest:
(click the link above to read all of these articles)

February 2, 2006
Today's subjects include: Social Services and Federal Budget // Low-Income Heating Assistance // Poverty Statistics – Illinois // Child Support Enforcement Computer System – Arizona // Working Poor and Taxes – Washington D.C. // Welfare Payment Amounts – Colorado // Series On Poverty – Sevier County, Tennessee // Health Study – Wisconsin // Work Force Preparation – New Mexico // School Vouchers – Ohio // Extended Public Education Proposal – Washington // No Child Left Behind Act – Alexandria, Va // Affordable Housing – New Jersey // Health of Homeless – New York

January 30, 2006
Today's subjects include: Child Support Policies - Michigan, Ohio // Child Welfare Reform - Indiana // Children in the Legal System - Arizona // Dental Care for Uninsured Children - Wisconsin // Domestic Violence & Poverty - Michigan // Economics Research & Public Policy // Family Visiting Programs // Grandparent-headed Households - New York; & Federal Budget // Health Care Policy Issues // Health Care Policy - Opinion // Health Care for Immigrants - Illinois, Michigan // Health Care for Rural Poor - Texas // Health Insurance for Working Families // Homelessness & Families; & the Law // Homelessness - Delaware, Pennsylvania, Suburbs // Kids Count - Missouri // Income Inequality - New Report // Low Income Heating Assistance Program // Low-wage Work - Opinion // Medicaid Policy Proposals // Minimum Wage - Virginia // School Achievement Testing // Social Services & Federal Budget; Opinion // Tax Policy & the Poor - Alabama, Hawaii // Undocumented Immigrants // U.S. Census & Prison Population // Wisconsin Works Program

Each of the weekly digests offers dozens of links or more to media articles that are time-sensitive.
The older the link, the more likely it is to either be dead or have moved to an archive - and some archives [but not all] are pay-as-you-go.
[For the current week's digest, click on the POVERTY DISPATCH Digest link above]

The Poverty Dispatch weekly digest is a good tool for monitoring what's happening in the U.S.; it's a guide to best practices and lessons learned in America.

Subscribe to the Poverty Dispatch!
Send an e-mail message to John Wolf [ jwolf@ssc.wisc.edu ] to receive a plain text message twice a week with one to two dozen links to media articles with a focus on poverty, welfare reform, child welfare, health, Medicaid from across the U.S.
And it's free...

Source:
Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP)
[ University of Wisconsin-Madison ]

For the current week's digest, click on the POVERTY DISPATCH Digest link at the top of this section.
Recently-archived POVERTY DISPATCH weekly digests:

- January 26, 2006
- January 19
- January 12
- January 5
- December 29, 2005

POVERTY DISPATCH description/archive - weekly issues back to August 2005, 50+ links per issue
NOTE: this archive is part of the Canadian Social Research Links American Non-Governmental Social Research page.

- Go to the Links to American Government Social Research page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/us.htm
- Go to the Links to American Non-Governmental Social Research (A-J) page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/us2.htm
- Go to the Links to American Non-Governmental Social Research (M-Z) page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/us3.htm

11. What's new from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities - January 2006
--- Pulling Apart : A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends
--- High-income households benefit most from capital gains and dividend tax cuts
--- Capital income has become more concentrated at the top
--- Growth in long-term income inequalities continues

Pulling Apart:
A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends (PDF file - 622K, 66 pages)
By Jared Bernstein, Elizabeth McNichol, Karen Lyons
January 2006
"(...)The growth of income inequality is primarily due to the growth in wage inequality. (...) Several factors have contributed to increasing wage inequality, including long periods of high unemployment, globalization, the shrinkage of manufacturing jobs and the expansion of low-wage service jobs and immigration, as well as the lower real value of the minimum wage and fewer and weaker unions. These factors have led to an erosion of wages for workers with less than a college education, who make up approximately the lowest-earning 70 percent of the workforce. More recently, even those with a college education have experienced real wage declines, in part due to the bursting of the tech bubble in high-wage industries, but also due to the downward pressure on wage growth from offshore competition."

Source:
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)

Also Released in january by CBPP:

CAPITAL GAINS AND DIVIDEND TAX CUTS: DATA MAKE CLEAR THAT HIGH-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS BENEFIT THE MOST
by Joel Friedman and Katherine Richards
http://www.cbpp.org/1-30-06tax2.htm
http://www.cbpp.org/1-30-06tax2.pdf 5pp.
This paper, using data from the Federal Reserve Board and the Tax Policy Center, refutes the claims that the benefits from extending the capital gains and dividend tax cuts are widespread and that such an extension is critical for the strength of the stock market.

NEW, UNNOTICED CBO DATA SHOW CAPITAL INCOME HAS BECOME MUCH MORE CONCENTRATED AT THE TOP
by Isaac Shapiro and Joel Friedman
http://www.cbpp.org/1-29-06tax2.htm
http://www.cbpp.org/1-29-06tax2.pdf 4pp.
This analysis finds that capital gains income subject to taxation has become increasingly concentrated among the top one percent of the population. As a result, the benefits of extending the capital gains and dividend tax cuts are also likely to have become increasingly concentrated.

NEW CBO DATA INDICATE GROWTH IN LONG-TERM INCOME INEQUALITY CONTINUES
by Isaac Shapiro and Joel Friedman
http://www.cbpp.org/1-29-06tax.htm
http://www.cbpp.org/1-29-06tax.pdf 6pp.
This analysis shows that the long-term trend towards increased income inequality, with income gains at the very top of the income spectrum dwarfing such gains among the middle class, has reasserted itself.

- Go to the Links to American Non-Governmental Social Research (A-J) page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/us2.htm

12. Welfare Reform Green Paper - U.K. - January 24
(Department for Work and Pensions)

Welfare Reform Green Paper - U.K.
The Government launched a Green Paper "A new deal for welfare: Empowering people to work" on Tuesday 24 January 2006. This is a landmark document for the Department in meeting its objectives of promoting opportunity and independence for all. It contains major new proposals to help individuals achieve their potential through work.

Click on the link above to download the report in separate PDF files, or click the link below to download the entire report in one file.

A new deal for welfare:
Empowering people to work (PDF file - 1.1MB, 112 pages)
Presented to Parliament by
the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
by Command of Her Majesty
January 2006
"Proposals outlined in this paper are informed by ongoing informal consultation with key stakeholders. Indeed, we have been consulting on incapacity benefits reform since 2002, when we published Pathways to work – Helping people into employment. Proposals for lone parents, Housing Benefit and occupational health are similarly the product of a lengthy process of consultation and evaluation of evidence from existing policies."

A new deal for welfare: empowering people to work
Press Release
24 January 2006
The Government today announced a radical reform of the welfare state with the publication of the welfare reform green paper - A new deal for welfare: Empowering people to work. The paper seeks to end the legacy of benefit dependency and deprivation that can damage communities across Britain. Our proposals provide a once in a generation opportunity to transform the welfare state. They build upon our principles for reform; rights and responsibilities providing the individual with the support they need to transform their own life-chances, and those of their family.

They include detailed proposals for:
* reforming incapacity benefits;
* a £360 million roll out of Pathways to Work across the country by 2008
* extending support to lone parents and older workers;
* reforming housing benefit;
* transforming support for people living in our cities; and
* delivering support to meet the needs of everyone
It sets out our proposals for achieving an 80% employment rate for people of working age.