Canadian Social Research Newsletter

Canadian Social Research Newsletter
February 12, 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 1589 subscribers.
Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see some notes and a disclaimer.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

1. The Current State of Canadian Family Finances - 2005 Report (Vanier Institute of the Family) - February 11
2. Poverty and socioeconomic inequalities in Québec : Recueil statistique sur la pauvreté et les inégalités socioéconomiques au Québec (Institut de la statistique du Québec, le Ministère de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale) - Le 7 février/ Feb. 7
3. Womyn's Voices (interactive web resources) site launch (Womenspace) - February
4. Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
5. Improvements to the Ontario Disability Support Program (Ministry of Community and Social Services) - February 8
6. Tackling Poverty in Hamilton: Roundtable for Poverty Reduction --- Update
7. What's New from Statistics Canada:
--- Labour Force Survey, January 2006 - February 10
--- Health Reports: How healthy are Canadians? Annual report 2005 - February 9
--- Canada's retirement income programs - February 7
--- Legal aid, 2004/05 - February 7
8. Risk and Opportunity: Creating Options for Vulnerable Workers (Canadian Policy Research Networks) - January 2006
9. Toque Tuesday Campaign against Homelessness in Canada (Raising the Roof) - February 7
10. The Prime Minister and his Cabinet - February 6
11. What's new from the Childcare Resource and Research Unit (University of Toronto) - February 10

International Content

12. Poverty Dispatch Digest : U.S. media coverage of social issues and programs --- February 9
13. Budget of the United States Government - Fiscal Year 2007 (U.S. Government Printing Office) - February 6
14. Special report on Medicaid 2006 (Pew Center on the States) - January 2006
15. The Child Rights Information Network (CRIN) re-launches its website - February 2006

Have a great week!

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

E-mail:
gilseg@rogers.com

1. The Current State of Canadian Family Finances - 2005 Report - February 11
(Vanier Institute of the Family)

Can You Spare a Dime?
Real Hourly Earnings Rise By Only A Dime Over More Than A Decade
News Release
February 11, 2006
"Ottawa— More and more second-earners are entering the job market because they “have to” rather than because they “want to”? More families really need that extra cash just to stay afloat. The influx of these family members into the paid workforce has produced a record-number of dual-income families. According to the latest Current State of Canadian Family Finances, families are now “cash-strapped”. If you take out inflation, the typical worker now earns only 10 cents more per hour than they did in 1991. In addition, the time worked per week declined by about an hour and a half over the period."

Complete report:

The Current State of Canadian Family Finances - 2005 Report
February 2006
HTML version
PDF version (303K, 28 pages)
"... Poverty almost non-existent among married seniors --- but more poverty among adults 18-64 than in 1990..."

Source:
Vanier Institute of the Family

- Go to the Children, Families and Youth Links (NGO) page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/chnngo.htm

2. Poverty and socioeconomic inequalities in Québec: Recueil statistique sur la pauvreté et les inégalités socioéconomiques au Québec - Le 7 février/ Feb. 7
(Institut de la statistique du Québec et le Ministère de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale)

Poverty and socioeconomic inequalities in Québec:
Recueil statistique sur la pauvreté et les inégalités socioéconomiques au Québec

NOTE: the press release for the Recueil is in both French and English, but the report itself is available only in French and in PDF format.
Use Google Language Tools to translate words, paragraphs and entire URLs.

Press Release
February 7, 2006
A new research tool :
The Ministère de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale and the Institut de la statistique du Québec
unveil the Recueil statistique sur la pauvreté et les inégalités socioéconomiques au Québec
Québec, February 7, 2006 – The ministère de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale and the Institut de la statistique du Québec unveiled today the Recueil statistique sur la pauvreté et les inégalités socioéconomiques au Québec. This collection contains the figures for poverty and socioeconomic inequalities and presents the evolution of the situation of persons and families living in poverty. The collection provides data on over twenty indicators calculated using different conceptual and methodological approaches. The large number of indicators available reflects both the multidimensional nature of poverty and social exclusion and the variety of approaches and calculation methods developed to evaluate these phenomena.
Some of these indicators give an idea of the low-income rates in Québec. The low income measure (LIM), which presents the evolution of the proportion of low-income families between 1986 and 2002, the most recent years of statistics available, and the regional data for 2003. Others make it possible to compare Québec to the rest of Canada, the portrait varying depending on the measure used. This collection is an excellent complement to Inventaire des indicateurs de pauvreté et d'exclusion sociale, which was published in November 2005 and gives a general overview of the myriad ways of defining and measuring poverty and social exclusion, while presenting the advantages and disadvantages of each indicator inventoried. It targets all persons, practitioners and organizations interested in the issues of poverty and social exclusion.

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

12. Poverty Dispatch Digest :
U.S. media coverage of social issues and programs --- February 9

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 9, 2006

Today's subjects include: Social Services and Federal Budget // Social Services and Federal Budget – Opinion // Medicaid Spending Reduction // Grandparent-Headed Households // Child Support Enforcement – Editorial // Marriage and Fatherhood Grant Program // Access to Advanced Placement Classes // Work Force Preparation – Minnesota // Child Support Enforcement Audit – Minnesota // Children's Health Insurance Proposal – Tennessee // Small Business Health Insurance Proposal – Washington // Grandparent-Headed Households – Illinois // Low-Income Heating Assistance – Wisconsin // Low-Income Tax Credit - San Francisco, Ca // Child Welfare Audit – Milwaukee County, WI // Early Childhood Education – Utah, Houston TX

February 6, 2006

Today's subjects include: Welfare Reform // Federal Pressure on State Welfare Programs // Poverty Report - Illinois // Poverty Levels - Rockford, IL // Poverty Levels and Homelessness - Fairfax County, VA // Poverty Study - Alabama // Welfare Reform - Massachusetts // Welfare and Work - Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington // Budget Surplus and Increased Welfare Payments - Ohio // Push to Increase Welfare Assistance - Hawaii // Medicaid Cuts and Low-Income Children - Missouri // Large Companies and Medicaid - Utah // Cuts in Foster-Care Benefits - California // Child-Care Fraud - California // Minimum Wage - Virginia // Homelessness - Alaska

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:

- February 2, 2006
- January 26
- January 19
- January 12
- January 5

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

13. Budget of the United States Government (Fiscal Year 2007) - February 6
(U.S. Government Printing Office)

Budget of the United States Government: Main Page
Fiscal Year 2007 Budget
February 6, 2006
Covers the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2006

Browse Fiscal Year 2007 - links to: Budget Documents | Appendix | Supporting Documents | Related Documents | Spreadsheets

Sample content from the budget:

Overview of the President's 2007 Budget (PDF file, 83K)
The Nation's Fiscal Outlook (PDF file, 192K)
Department of Health and Human Services (PDF file, 642K)
Department of Housing and Urban Development (PDF file - 300K)
Social Security Administration (PDF file, 252K)

Historical Tables, Fiscal Year 2007- links to dozens of historical tables showing budgetary items as far back as the 1930s to 2006 and, in some cases, projections up to 2010

Source:
Government Printing Office (GPO)

Related Links from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET: A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS
An Administration's budget is a statement of its priorities. This budget’s priorities are clear: it features cuts in numerous domestic programs that serve low- and middle-income families alongside continued — and substantially expanded — tax cuts of very large size that concentrate their benefits on people high on the income scale. The new budget also contains continual significant increases in defense and homeland security spending. This analysis assesses the President's budget on three basic criteria — fiscal responsibility, fairness and balance, and the degree to which it is transparent. This analysis indicates that the budget falls well short on all three standards.
HTML version
PDF version (7 pages)

PRESIDENT'S BUDGET WOULD CUT FOOD FOR OVER 400,000 LOW-INCOME SENIORS
This analysis finds that President Bush's fiscal year 2007 budget would eliminate funding for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), terminating food assistance to over 400,000 low-income seniors in an average month.
HTML version
PDF version (3 pages)

Google.ca Web Search Results: "2007 budget, United States"
Google.ca News Search Results: "2007 budget, United States"
Source:
Google.ca

- Go to the Links to American Government Social Research Links page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/us.htm

14. Special report on Medicaid 2006 - January 2006
(Pew Center on the States)

Pew Center on the States: Special Report on Medicaid 2006
Bridging the Gap Between Care and Cost (U.S.)
This special report on Medicaid, by the Pew Center on the States, seeks to analyze the real-world experiences of states, highlight examples of what works and what doesn't, and inform a crucial policy debate that will affect the lives of millions of Americans.
- incl. links to the Complete report (PDF file - 292K, 24 pages) and to a table of contents (copied below) with links to the individual chapters in HTML.
Table of contents:
Overview
* The Great Debate Medicaid in the eye of the storm
* The Challenge of Change Balancing cost controls with the health of millions
The States at Work
* Long-term care Medicaid's Third Rail
* Prescription drugs The Rx Factor: Controlling prescription drug costs
* Technology The Great eHealth Hope: How technology can help
* Cost sharing Something of Value: Experiments in cost sharing
* Management Tools to Live By: Managing for better performance
* Private insurance Trading Places: Tapping into private insurance
* Reform The Radical Reformers: A new approach
* About the Report
* Related Resources - Links to over 800 reports from the 50 states pertaining to Medicaid and related health issues. These reports were published in 2004 and 2005 and come from many different sources, including auditors, legislatures, a wide variety of state agencies and research organizations. Resources can be browsed by state or topic.

News Release:

Pew Center on the States Examines State Innovation in Medicaid Policy
January 1, 2006
(Philadelphia, PA) - All 50 states are experimenting with new ways to try to rein in Medicaid costs. While these approaches may save money, they could limit the program's capacity to provide vital health care to the nearly 60 million Americans who depend on it. Which reforms have been most effective? What may be the unintended consequences of reforms to Medicaid? The Pew Center on the States, a division of The Pew Charitable Trusts, today issued its first state policy report, Special Report on Medicaid: Bridging the Gap Between Care and Cost, which analyzes how state Medicaid programs are wrestling with rising costs and highlights examples of which innovations are working, which are not, and why.

Source:
Pew Center on the States
"The Pew Center conducts highly credible research, brings together diverse perspectives, analyzes states' experiences to determine what works and what doesn't, and collaborates with other funders and organizations to shine a spotlight on nonpartisan, pragmatic solutions."

- Go to the Health Links (Canada/International) page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/health.htm
- Go to the Links to American Non-Governmental Social Research (M-Z) Links page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/us3.htm

15. The Child Rights Information Network re-launches its website - February 2006

Child Rights Information Network (CRIN)
The Child Rights Information Network re-launched its website early in February. The website has been redesigned to offer more features and interactive tools, with easy navigation, highlighting the latest information added to the site, and using new technology, such as RSS feeds.

- incl. links to : Resources section - News section - Email lists - RSS feeds - Directory of child rights organisations - For children - Regions - Languages - Interactive features - more...

- Go to the Children's Rights Links page: http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/chnrights.htm

Disclaimer/Privacy Statement

Both Canadian Social Research Links (the site) and this Canadian Social Research Newsletter belong solely to me, Gilles Séguin.

I am solely accountable for the choice of links presented therein and for the occasional editorial comment - it's my time, my home computer, my experience, my biases, my Rogers Internet account and my web hosting service.

I administer the mailing list and distribute the weekly newsletter using software on the web server of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
Thanks, CUPE!

If you wish to subscribe to the e-mail version of newsletter, go to the Canadian Social Research Newsletter Online Subscription page:
http://lists.cupe.ca/mailman/listinfo/csrl-news

You can unsubscribe by going to the same page or by sending me an e-mail message [ gilseg@rogers.com ]

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The e-mail version of this newsletter is available only in plain text (no graphics, no hyperlinks, no fancy bolding or italics, etc.) to avoid security problems with government departments, universities and other networks with firewalls. The text-only version is also friendlier for people using older or lower-end technology.

Privacy Policy:
The Canadian Social Research Newsletter mailing list is not used for any purpose except to distribute each weekly issue.
I promise not share any information on this list, nor to send you any junk mail.

Links presented in the Canadian Social Research Newsletter point to different views about social policy and social programs.
There are some that I don't agree with, so don't get on my case, eh...

To access earlier online HTML issues of the Canadian Social Research Newsletter, go to the Newsletter page:
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/news.htm

Please feel free to distribute this newsletter as widely as you wish, but please remember to mention Canadian Social Research Links when you do.

Cheers!
Gilles

E-MAIL:
gilseg@rogers.com

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At's Amore !!!
(with apologies to Dean Martin...)

When the moon hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie
That's amore.

When an eel bites your hand
And that's not what you planned
That's a moray.

When our habits are strange
And our customs deranged
That's our mores.

When your horse munches straw
And the bales total four
That's some more hay.

When Othello's poor wife
becomes stabbed with a knife
That's a Moor, eh?

When a Japanese knight
Used his sword in a fight
That's Samurai.

When your sheep go to graze
In a damp marshy place,
That's a moor, eh?

When your boat comes home fine
And you tied up her line
That's a moor, eh?

When you ace your last tests
Like you did all the rest
That's some more "A"s!

When on Mt. Cook you see
An aborigine,
That's a Maori.

Alley Oop's homeland has
A space gun with pizzazz,
That's a Moo ray....

A comedian-ham
With the name Amsterdam
That's a Morey.

When your chocolate graham
Is so full and so crammed
That more.

When you've had quite enough
Of this dumb rhyming stuff
That's "No more!", eh?

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HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
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The Compulsory Mushy Stuff:
http://www.theholidayspot.com/valentine/

- incl. links to:

Celebrating Valentine's Day!
Say I love you in many languages!
Links to Other Valentine's Day Sites
Send your 21 Reasons why you love him/her!
Test your luck on Valentine's day!
Valentine Gifts
Send Greeting cards
Download Wallpapers
Romantic Crafts
Print Love Letterheads
Gift Ideas 4 You
Poems & Poetries
Recipes 4 your love
Jokes And Humor
History of Valentine
Cupid History
Valentine Zodiacs
Valentine Symbols

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