I'm always hesitant to take those articles at face value. While I do agree that significant changes need to be made to the family-aid system in Canada which is very similar to the one in the UK, I find claims like:
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married or co-habiting couples on average weekly earnings are better off by only £1 per person compared to a single parent who has never worked.
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to be sensationalist and very rarely backed up with reliable data.
Also there is a blatent oversight in the article where it implies that:
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President Clinton's reforms of the 1990s,...have cut... teenage pregnancies by nearly a third.
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It is well documentd that while the Clinton administration is responsible for an impressive decline in teenage pregnancy in the United States which has double the teen pregnancy rate of any other industralized nation. This drop in teen pregnancy had little if anything to do with welfare rates, and a substantial amount to do with increased availablity of sexual education directed towards critical areas of lower income sectors especially blacks and hispanics of lower income.
http://www.agi-usa.org/presentations/abort_slides.pdf
Mike Harris in Ontario significantly reduced welfare dependance by increasing requirements to be on welfare, reducing social services available to low income people and cutting social programs that assisted low income people in linking with the welfare system. While the total number of people on welfare decreased, unemployment increased and homelesness skyrocketed.
Although I'm sure we are about to encounter several people who see themselves as individual freedom fighters who are protecting their right not to pay for some stereotypical vision they have of a lazy person who does nothing but suck up their tax dollars, I don't think the issue is ever as simple as that.
One reason that middle income families are feeling more pressure than before is that despite what are forcasted as better economies the average family is not making any more money now than they were ten or fifteen years ago, despite the fact that cost of living has gone up.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/nat...my-050118.html At the same time welfare rates are indexed to cost of living, so many people have the persepective that welfare recipents are making out like bandits while so called "ordinary" people are struggling.
The implementation of workfare under the Harris government (similar to the Clinton solution) served not to create more jobs, where people would be recieve career training so that they would be more "hireable" in the private job market, instead it superseded many low income service sector jobs creating more people unemployed and in need of assistance. Ironic.
Another reason that we have a vision of the welfare person who has "never worked a day" is that some welfare policies actively discourage people from working. For instance in Canada you are not necessairly eligable for subsidized day care even if you are on welfare... and if you are on welfare you will not be able to afford private day care. Also a UN study recently released sited Canada's day care programs as some of the worst with long waiting lists. Meaning that someone on welfare may not be off the list and have recieved day care for a child until the child has already entered school.
Another discouragement from working while on welfare in the Canadian system is that securing part-time work that would place you well under the poverty line, but could be a first step towards getting the work experience that you need to get off welfare can result in one of two scenerios. Either you will be uneligable for welfare because you managed to find employment or, if you are not kicked off entirely the money you earn will be topped up by welfare... in other words there is no incentive to work since you will get the same amount of money as if you were not working.
I'd see a sliding scale for subsizised day care which would include parents who are not on welfare having access to subsizized day care based on income, more availability of affordable housing, and teired welfare for those who are able and willing to work as good steps towards improving the welfare system and providing real solutions and incentives for people to leave the system. I think making an arbitrary income line and deciding that if you fall underneath it qualifis you for assistance up to that amount is probably what holds a lot of people back from trying to breach the gap, and creates a lot of the stereotype of the lazy welfare person.