Marital status decisions and Canadian social assistance policy

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Résumé (français)

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Résumé (anglais)

This dissertation contributes to the literature assessing the relationship between marital status decisions and social assistance policies. In the first essay, I document the new demographic trends in Canadian family structure, which echo those observed in the rest of the industrialised world. Probably the most profound change has been the increased popularity of cohabitation. However, in spite of its increased prevalence, relatively little is known about this family state. Given the inexorable link between marital status, social policy and other legislation, I review the literature concerned with the policy-marital status relationship. Although legal and social policy have gradually equalised the rights of cohabiters and their married counterparts, they have not always been protected to the same extent. In particular, Canadian social assistance eligibility rules have historically treated married and cohabiting individuals quite differently. In this thesis, I focus on the rules which address the eligibility of unmarried individuals living together in Canada—the so-called “Spouse in the House” (SIH) rules. In Chapter 2, I examine the effect of tougher SIH eligibility rules on the decision to marry, cohabit or remain single. Using time-series cross-sectional data from Statistics Canada’s Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID), 1 I find that the implementation of tougher eligibility rules facing cohabiters in the province of Ontario render them less likely to cohabit and more likely to marry. While Chapter 2 reveals level effects of such legislation, it does not provide any insight as to the possible mechanisms at play. Using the associated longitudinal files from the SLID, I estimate dynamic models of marital status transitions in Chapter 3, using Cox proportional hazard methods. The more stringent welfare rules are found to encourage cohabiters to move on to the next stage of their relationship—marriage. Whether or not these findings are indicative of a transitory response or a new long run equilibrium cannot be ascertained. 1 The paper is based upon data from the Master files of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, made available by Statistics Canada at the Toronto Region Data Centre. While the research and analysis are based on data from Statistics Canada, the opinions expressed do not represent the views of Statistics Canada. All computations were prepared by the author and the responsibility for the use and interpretation of these data is entirely that of the author.