Report of the Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario: Taking Stock Two Years Later

In early 2011, the Government of Ontario struck the Commission for the Review of Social Assistance to review the social assistance programs and make recommendations for improving them. The programs were characterized by unsustainable growth in caseloads and program expenditures and poor outcomes for program participants. Imagine the challenges: program costs running far ahead of revenue growth; an incredibly complex system with over 800 rules, 240 benefit rates, 50 children’s benefit rates, and 30 plus specialized benefits for those who qualify; persistent high growth in caseloads of persons with disabilities; and the difficulty for many who leave the program to keep their jobs for long periods of time. The base benefit rate was inadequate, at $600 a month (now$656). However, many receiving specialized benefits face serious disincentives to work, particularly those with disabilities, as such benefits are unavailable outside social assistance, implying an effective clawback rate of 100%. For some it is not worth getting a job, as their welfare benefits are larger than the incomes they can earn. In its final report, the Commission recommended steps to improve system sustainability, reduce complexity and improve work-related outcomes, while providing appropriate income supports during periods of need. The Commission presented its report to the government more than two years ago. It recommended that the program be “transformed” though: eliminating specialized benefits, which would finance a higher basic benefit rate to improve adequacy; providing needed specialized benefits, such as benefits for those with disability and extended health care, outside the program to all who need them to improve work incentives; providing improved and effective employment benefits and services to all who could work, even those with a disability, to improve labour market outcomes; simplifying the program so caseload workers could spend their time helping clients rather than wasting it on figuring out complex rules; and, with these changes, there was no rationale to have two separate programs, one for general welfare clients and the other for people with disabilities, and thus replacing them with one unified program to be delivered by municipalities and funded by the province. The government response can be summarized with four key points. First, it acknowledged the importance of the analysis in the report and the need to transform the program. Second, it has taken steps to raise the level of assistance for single adults relying on Ontario Works, make some income exempt and to make employment supports more effective. Third, it has suggested more consultations and discussions with relevant stakeholders to chart a future course. Finally, the key recommendations in the report that focused on changing the basic program structure, or “transforming” it, have not been acted upon to date. The factors that led to the establishment of the Commission described above continue unabated and indeed have become more serious: program costs are projected to grow 16.1% over three years to 2014-15, outpacing both revenue growth of 8.3% and cumulative inflation of 4 %; caseloads of those with disabilities over the last three years have risen another 7.3%; and the program is as complex today as it was two years ago. In light of this, it has become even more urgent for the Ontario government to transform the program, including changes in its basic structure, consistent with the Commission’s recommendations. The need for reform and the Commission’s recommendations are both clear for improving economic and social outcomes in Ontario

Caught in the Middle: Some in Canada’s Middle Class are Doing Well; Others Have Good Reason to Worry

It is sometimes difficult to tell which group is more distressed about the purportedly deteriorating well-being of Canada’s middle class: Politicians courting middle-class voters, or the Canadians who actually identify as middle class. Even more difficult to discern is whether either group truly understands precisely who it is they are worrying about. There is no firm consensus on where the upper and lower boundaries of the middle class lie, with economists and statisticians disagreeing on the income levels and brackets that should be included in the definition of middle class, and some even arguing that income itself may be an inappropriate measure (preferring instead, for instance, consumption and lifestyle). And yet, despite all the conflicting approaches to measuring the middle class, what emerges from a review of the array of definitions and data sources is that the politicians and voters can at least partly justify their angst. While the middle class has seen its income grow, it has not kept pace with the income growth rate of higherearning groups. But not all members of the so-called middle class face the same plight. The workers who have lost the most ground relative to higher-income groups, are those with below-average human capital (that is, lower skill and education), and are at the lower end of the middle-income bracket. The largest source of downward pressure on middle-class incomes has been the decline of Canada’s manufacturing industry. Beginning in the postwar years, factory jobs developed a misplaced reputation for being well-paying middleclass work. In fact, the work provided generous pay and benefits only relative to the low human capital that was necessary to find employment in manufacturing. As manufacturing has declined across all industrialized countries, lower-skilled workers have been forced to accept lower rates of income growth. Meanwhile, more gains have been made by those with high levels of human capital. Public-sector professionals in particular have come to share the human-capital and income characteristics of Canada’s highest-paid managers and professionals, often enjoying greater job security as well. In reality, anxiety over the state of the middle class and its future is actually about the working class. Lumping middle-class factory workers and clerical assistants in with middle-class teachers and nurses — as current political discussion tends to do — obscures the truth about which members of that group are genuinely struggling to keep up. As long as politicians continue to promote policies aimed at helping everyone within such a vague and broad target group, they can only end up misdirecting resources by enriching those who are already doing reasonably well, rather than focusing on those working-class Canadians who truly are not. Already net transfers through the tax system to middle-income groups have grown markedly. These transfers have managed to offset about half the erosion of middle-class incomes in the marketplace. Those transfers have been financed through increased tax payments from high-income groups, but also through shrinking transfers to low-income groups. These developments raise serious policy issues for which there are no simple answers. The breadth of Canada’s middle class obviously means that it encompasses the largest proportion of families, by far. Any further policies aimed at transferring wealth from other income groups to appease middle-class voters will be costly. Given that the main cause for concern is the worsening situation of lowerskilled workers, politicians who truly want to help those struggling in the “middle class,” should focus their efforts on helping Canadians acquire more education and more skills

L’efficacité de la politique budgétaire en économie ouverte

The debate between keynesians and monetarists on the effectiveness of fiscal policy has been going for quite a long time, and all efforts to resolve it have met with little success. While everyone would agree that the controversy can only be resolved on empirical grounds, there is no agreement among the two schools as to what constitutes an appropriate test of their respective theories. In this paper, a small macroeconomic model has been developed which incorporates the major elements of the keynesian-monetarist debate and which can produce either keynesian or monetarist results, depending upon the values taken by the particular sets of coefficients. The model has not been estimated and is not designed, therefore, to evaluate the actual impact of fiscal policy measures in Canada. Rather the coefficients of the model have been either borrowed from existing models or set a priori, in order to identify those aspects or parameters of the model which are most important in determining the effectiveness of fiscal policy. Simulations performed with the model indicate a number of factors that are critical in producing either Keynesian or monetarist results. These are: 1) the expected—real—interest elasticity of private real investment; 2) the substitutability between government bonds, money and other assets; 3) the specification of wage behaviour and the degree of influence of price expectations; 4) the sensitivity of nominal interest rates to changes in the inflationary expectations; 5) the extent to which future taxes are anticipated by consumers and 6) the mechanism for determining the price of exports

L’inflation canadienne de la dernière décennie vue à travers CANDIDE

In this paper, a large scale econometric model of the Canadian economy (CANDIDE) is employed to study questions concerning the evolution of Canadian prices over the period 1960-1974. After a brief description of the wage-price sectors of the model, "trade-off" or Phillips curves are derived on the basis of simulations of the entire model, for the periods 1960-1965 and 1965-1970 separately. On the basis of these simulations, it is found that the trade-off curve does not appear to be very sensitive to the choice of the instrument utilized to move the Canadian economy from positions of lower to fuller utilization of its labour resources. The position of the curve is, however, quite sensitive to the rate of increase of U.S. prices; also, the full curve appears to have shifted upward considerably from the first to the second subperiod. The analysis of the period 1970-1974 suggests, among other conclusions, the possibility that an even rate of U.S. inflation over this period of rather violent fluctuations in U.S. prices could have had in itself favourable repercussions on the Canadian trade-off curve. The concluding section presents another summary of the major findings, as well as some important caveats and qualifications

L’efficacité de la politique budgétaire en économie ouverte

The debate between keynesians and monetarists on the effectiveness of fiscal policy has been going for quite a long time, and all efforts to resolve it have met with little success. While everyone would agree that the controversy can only be resolved on empirical grounds, there is no agreement among the two schools as to what constitutes an appropriate test of their respective theories. In this paper, a small macroeconomic model has been developed which incorporates the major elements of the keynesian-monetarist debate and which can produce either keynesian or monetarist results, depending upon the values taken by the particular sets of coefficients. The model has not been estimated and is not designed, therefore, to evaluate the actual impact of fiscal policy measures in Canada. Rather the coefficients of the model have been either borrowed from existing models or set a priori, in order to identify those aspects or parameters of the model which are most important in determining the effectiveness of fiscal policy. Simulations performed with the model indicate a number of factors that are critical in producing either Keynesian or monetarist results. These are: 1) the expected—real—interest elasticity of private real investment; 2) the substitutability between government bonds, money and other assets; 3) the specification of wage behaviour and the degree of influence of price expectations; 4) the sensitivity of nominal interest rates to changes in the inflationary expectations; 5) the extent to which future taxes are anticipated by consumers and 6) the mechanism for determining the price of exports.

Determinación mediante pruebas aceleradas y a temperatura ambiente de la actividad antioxidante de varios extractos de plantas en aceite de girasol

The present study was conducted to investigate the antioxidant potential of 11 medicinally or economically important plant materials indigenous to Pakistan. The materials were extracted with 80% methanol and examined  for their antioxidant activity under different storage conditions using sunflower and soybean oils as oxidation substrates. Preliminary antioxidant activity assessment among the extracts was conducted with the TLC-test and by measuring percent inhibition of linoleic acid peroxidation. The rhizome of Iris germanica, leaves of Lawsonia alba, and M. oleifera, coffee (Coffee arabica) beans, rice (Oryza sativa) bran, wheat bran and oats (Avenis sativa) groats and hull, which showed higher antioxidant activity among the extracts, were further evaluated using soybean and sunflower oils as oxidation substrates. The vegetable oils were stabilized with extracts at a dosage of 0.12% (w/w), and individually subjected to accelerated (65 oC, 15 days) and ambient (6 months) storage. The oxidative deterioration level was monitored for the measurement of antioxidant activity index (AI), peroxide value (PV), conjugated dienes and trienes contents. Overall, the extracts of coffee beans, oat groats and hull, Iris germanica and M. oleifera leaves were found to be the most effective in extending oxidative stability, and retarding PV, primary and secondary oxidation products of soybean and sunflower oils. The order of efficiency of the plant extracts for stabilization of the subject oils was as follows: oat groats and hull > coffee beans > M. oleifera leaves > Lawsonia alba > Iris germanica > rice bran > wheat bran. Significant differences in the antioxidant potential of some of the extracts for stabilization of substrate oils were observed under ambient and accelerated storage conditions and thus demonstrated a variable antioxidant prospective of the extracts under different analytical protocols.El presente trabajo se ha realizado para investigar la capacidad antioxidante potencial de once plantas medicinales o económicamente importantes autónomas del Pakistán. Las plantas se extractaron con metanol al 80% y se estudia su capacidad antioxidante bajo diferentes condiciones de almacenamiento, utilizando aceite de girasol y soja como sustratos. Los ensayos previos de capacidad antioxidante se llevaron a cabo con la prueba TLC-test y midiendo el porcentaje de inhibición de la peroxidación del ácido linoleico. El rizoma de Iris germanica, las hojas de Lawsonia alba, y M. oleifera, las semillas de café (Coffee arabica), el salvado de arroz (Oryza sativa), el salvado de trigo y salvado, granos y cáscara de avena (Avenis sativa), que fueron las que tuvieron una mayor capacidad antioxidante, de todos los extractos, se ensayaron después usando los sustratos de girasol y soja. Los aceites vegetales se estabilizaron con una dosis de 0,12 (peso/peso) y se sometieron a ensayos de almacenamiento acelerados (15 días a 65º) o temperatura ambiente (6 meses). El deterioro oxidativo se siguió mediante la medida del índice de actividad (AI), índice de peróxido (PV), así como por el contenido de dienos y trienos. En general, los extractos de semillas de café, partículas y cáscaras de avena, y Iris germanica y hojas de M. oleifera fueron las que mostraron una mayor efectividad para extender la estabilidad de los aceites, y retardar la elevación del PV, así como en la prevención de la aparición de productos de oxidación primarios y secundarios. El orden de eficacia fue: partículas y cáscaras de avena > granos de café > hojas de M. oleifera > Lawsonia alba > Iris germanica > salvado de arroz > salvado de trigo. Se detectaron diferencias significativas en el potencial antioxidante de algunos extractos tanto a temperatura ambiente como en condiciones de las pruebas aceleradas. Ello demostró una amplia gama de propiedades antioxidante de los extractos frente a los diferentes procedimientos analíticos empleados

Aflatoxin B1 in chilies from the Punjab region, Pakistan

The occurrence of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in chilies from Pakistan was determined by using HPLC in work undertaken in Pakistan.Whole (n=22) and powdered (n=22) chilies were analyzed. Sixteen (73.0%) and 19 (86.4%) samples of whole and ground chilies, respectively, were contaminated. The mean concentration in powdered chilies (32.20 μg/kg) was higher statistically than in whole chilies (24.69 μg/kg). Concentrations ranged from 0.00 to 89.56 μg/ kg for powdered chilies, compared with 0.00–96.3 μg/kg for whole chilies. The limits of detection and quantification were 0.05 μg/kg and 0.53 μg/kg, respectively. The concentrations were high in general and greater than the statutory limit set by the European Union. There is considerable scope for improvements in chili production in Pakistan.Higher Education Commission, PakistanFundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Thermal Characterization of Purified Glucose Oxidase from A Newly Isolated Aspergillus Niger UAF-1

An intracellular glucose oxidase was isolated from the mycelium extract of a locally isolated strain of Aspergillus niger UAF-1. The enzyme was purified to a yield of 28.43% and specific activity of 135 U mg−1 through ammonium sulfate precipitation, anion exchange and gel filtration chromatography. The enzyme showed high affinity for D-glucose with a Km value of 2.56 mM. The enzyme exhibited optimum catalytic activity at pH 5.5. Temperature optimum for glucose oxidase, catalyzed D-glucose oxidation was 40°C. The enzyme showed a high thermostability having a half-life 30 min, enthalpy of denaturation 99.66 kJ mol−1 and free energy of denaturation 103.63 kJ mol−1. These characteristics suggest the use of glucose oxidase from Aspergillus niger UAF-1 as an analytical reagent and in the design of biosensors for clinical, biochemical and diagnostic assays

Anemia prevalence in women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2018

Anemia is a globally widespread condition in women and is associated with reduced economic productivity and increased mortality worldwide. Here we map annual 2000–2018 geospatial estimates of anemia prevalence in women of reproductive age (15–49 years) across 82 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), stratify anemia by severity and aggregate results to policy-relevant administrative and national levels. Additionally, we provide subnational disparity analyses to provide a comprehensive overview of anemia prevalence inequalities within these countries and predict progress toward the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target (WHO GNT) to reduce anemia by half by 2030. Our results demonstrate widespread moderate improvements in overall anemia prevalence but identify only three LMICs with a high probability of achieving the WHO GNT by 2030 at a national scale, and no LMIC is expected to achieve the target in all their subnational administrative units. Our maps show where large within-country disparities occur, as well as areas likely to fall short of the WHO GNT, offering precision public health tools so that adequate resource allocation and subsequent interventions can be targeted to the most vulnerable populations