| Abstract: | This study examines the development of impoverished pre-school children before and after the implementation of mandatory welfare-to-work initiatives in Canada. Using data from the 1994/95 and 1998/99 cycles of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, we explore the relationships that impoverished families’ income source and family income status have with pre-school children's school readiness. Findings indicate that both before and after the implementation of mandatory welfare-to-work initiatives, children in working poor families had higher school readiness scores than their peers whose families receive social assisntance, independent of family environment characteristics that differentiated working poor and social assistance poor families. In addition, both before and after the implementation of mandatory welfare-to-work initiatives, school readiness scores of poor children were lower than scores for non-poor children, with children living in families that had incomes at least 200 percent of the low-income cut-offs being the only group with scores above the expected standard of 100. In sum, our study fails to provide evidence that by the end of the 1990s welfare reforms supported the concurrent policy goal of improving the well-being of Canadian children in poverty. |
