Grant: Project Grant

How do income transfer programs like Old Age Security, income assistance and RentAssist affect health? Through the pandemic we witnessed large changes to income transfers in Canada. Moving out of the pandemic, government will have to decide whether or how to change income transfer programs given increased debt and growing expenditures on health care. Evidence on whether those programs impact health could be important in that decision-making. We will look at for four groups of people in Manitoba who received payments from government programs to see if their health improved when they received more money. The first group we will look at is low-income adults without children who received RentAssist benefits for the first time in 2014. Second, we will look at changes in health for adults with children who received a big increase to both RentAssist and their child benefits in 2015-16. Third, we will focus on health changes for older adults relying on social assistance, who received a very large income boost at age 65 from the Old Age Security / Guaranteed Income Supplement program. And fourth, we will look at changes in health for people receiving disability benefits for the first time after previously receiving general income assistance. At the end of this study, we will work with policymakers to ensure they understand what we have discovered and to develop a plan of action that can be implemented, if political leaders decide they would like to implement it.