Recent Changes to the Employment Insurance Regime: Encouraging Work On-claim and Off-claim

David M. Gray

Canadian Public Policy, 2006, vol. 32, issue 1, pages 99-110

Abstract: This paper evaluates some aspects of the 1996 Employment insurance (EI) reform package. One important modification was the small weeks initiative, which was a pilot program designed to encourage more working activity while qualifying for benefits. Another provision that was monitored closely is the "allowableearnings" regulation, which is designed to encourage claimants to accept short-term work while receiving benefits. I evaluate both of these provisions from an economic policy perspective. It is argued that for many frequent users of EI, the incentives regarding work activity are more complicated than is typically realized. The employment patterns of frequent users of EI are sensitive to changes in benefit calculation formulas, which has repercussions for the expansion of eligibility to more workers with non-standard employment patterns. Within the time horizon of a single EI claim, incentives to accept work have been strengthened, but

Date: 2006
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://economics.ca/cgi/jab?journal=cpp&view=v32n1/CPPv32n1p099.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
No access restriction except for the four most recent issues.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpp:issued:v:32:y:2006:i:1:p:99-110

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.utpjournals.com/cpp/

Access Statistics for this article

Canadian Public Policy is edited by James B. Davies

More articles in Canadian Public Policy from University of Toronto Press
Address: University of Toronto Press Journals Division 5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3H 5T8
Series data maintained by Prof. Werner Antweiler ().