Disability, Income,
and Poverty

Documents the economic well-being of working-age Albertans with disabilities or on income assistance as the Alberta Disability Assistance Program (ADAP) is implemented. A longitudinal panel measures income, employment, material deprivation, food security, and housing roughly every six months. The first round — a pre-reform baseline of 527 respondents — finds three in four below the low-income line and hardship that deepens with disability severity and is sharpest among AISH recipients.

Documents how Canada's Disability Tax Credit — originally a tax-equity measure for higher daily costs — has been retrofitted into the gateway certification for at least 13 federal disability supports, including the Canada Disability Benefit. Finds that 84 percent of working-age people with disabilities lack DTC certification, with women, those with mental-health and episodic conditions, and the lowest-income filers systematically squeezed out by a 16-page form, narrow severity criteria, and the cost of medical practitioner sign-off. Identifies four broken links in the certification pipeline and sets out concrete reforms — broader eligibility, automatic certification through CPP-D and provincial disability assistance, and coverage of certification costs — that would let benefits flow without overhauling the underlying credit.

Written shortly after the framework legislation for the Canada Disability Benefit was introduced, this article examines the key benefit design elements and options facing policymakers — contrasting them against the directional parameters set in the legislation and situating the CDB amongst existing federal and provincial programs for persons with disabilities. Documents the design choices that could have been made differently and provides a foundation for critiquing the regulations released in summer 2024.

Models how B.C. recipients of Disability Assistance and Temporary Assistance can end up with less after-tax income after working more hours, once clawbacks and lost health and general supplemental benefits are counted. A single Disability Assistance recipient moving from 16 to 35 hours a week could lose roughly $1,500 a year, a poverty trap built into program design.