Regional Indicator 18: Income Assistance

	Why It's Important The proportion of the population collecting income assistance benefits (commonly referred to as welfare) is an important indicator of the economic health of a jurisdiction and may also indicate problems in the incentive structure of the income assistance programs available within a jurisdiction.

Regional Indicator Eighteen tracks the number of Income Assistance beneficiaries as a percent of the population aged 0-64.

A general pattern of large increases in the income assistance recipients-to-population ratio in the early 1990s followed by even larger decreases in the ratio in the mid-to-late 1990s was seen all across the country. In BC, the ratio peaked at 10.4 in 1995 and has since fallen by 88 percent to 1.3 in 2007.

The proportion of the population (aged 0-64) collecting income assistance benefits has followed a similar pattern in Vancouver, Victoria, Abbotsford and in Regional BC.

The proportion peaked in 1995 at 9.3 in Vancouver, 9.8 in Victoria, 10.8 in Abbotsford and 11.9 in Regional BC.

Since 1995, the number of beneficiaries as a percent of the population (aged 0-64) has fallen by at least 86 and by as much as 90 percent, depending on the region.

The proportion of the population collecting income assistance has consistently been higher in Regional BC than in the Census Metropolitan Areas although the differences are not large.