Less Income for More Hours of Work: Barriers to Work for Social Assistance Recipients in B.C.

Abstract

Individuals enter into paid work with the expectation they will be financially better off than had they not entered into paid work. Unfortunately, for recipients of Income Assistance in the province of British Columbia (B.C.), additional hours of employment may actually take money out of their pocket due to the design of income assistance and its unintended interactions with other income and social support programs and the tax system. In this paper, we illustrate cases where B.C. residents receiving Disability Assistance or Temporary Assistance have less after-tax income after working additional hours of employment.