BC: Availability of welfare encourages kids to leave school: report

by Barry Artiste | June 5, 2008 at 04:48 am

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Opinion
Barry Artiste, Now Public Contributor
Somehow I do not think roving bands of emancipated truant 13 year olds are setting up digs, eating candy and playing video games while on Welfare. Child Welfare would find them foster homes.

This Welfare scam I am sure is more for the 16 to 18 year old dropout who is tired of school or family rules and is looking to Welfare as a Career, with he and his likeminded buddies pooling their welfare money to share a place, smoke dope and work on that Budding Rap Career.

Because as anyone knows, a single welfare cheque won't go very far in this province unless you share 3 other welfare recipients to a apartment.

Availability of welfare encourages kids to leave school: reportRandy Shore, Vancouver SunPublished: Thursday, June 05, 2008
Teens as young as 13 are more likely to stay in school and proceed to the next grade when access to welfare is restricted, says a University of B.C. researcher.

Bill Warburton had observed that the dropout rate for children at risk of receiving income assistance rose with B.C.'s welfare caseload through the early 1990s and fell when a substantial package of welfare reforms was introduced Jan. 1, 1996, which removed about 100,000 people from the welfare rolls.

"We wondered if that was a coincidence," wrote Warburton, executive director of the Child and Youth Development Trajectories Research Unit at UBC.