Our Research
What is the relationship between marital status and social-assistance participation? Canadian analysis on how social-assistance policies may discourage marriage provides mixed results. However it shows that regional variations such as labour market conditions and wage growth are important considerations when exploring social-assistance participation and marital decision-making.
This provincial and territorial breakdown of the 2016 family census data shows that kids in Canada’s wealthiest provinces are the most likely to be growing up in families with two married parents.
This report examines the correlation between religious school attendance, pro-social attitudes, and civic involvement. Are religious school graduates more likely to vote, attend a community meeting, or engage in some other action that contributes to the common good? Author David Sikkink at the University of Notre Dame examines these issues through an analysis of a major American longitudinal data set.
While the issue of restrictive tendering is the result of provincial law made in Toronto for the whole province, it is local communities, and the citizens, workers, and companies living and working there, that are affected. This paper focuses on data from one particular municipality, the Region of Waterloo, which, because of its relatively recent certification as a construction employer, did not have data that fit within the time frame studied by our previous papers.
This national and historic breakdown of the 2016 family census data examines how, for the first time since 1981, Census 2016 omitted the distinction between married and cohabiting parents with regards to children’s living arrangements. Cardus Family made a special request for this data and offers several reasons why we ought to return to distinguishing between marriage and cohabitation with every census release.
Using Cardus Education Survey data, University of Notre Dame analysts say that attending a Protestant Evangelical school has a measurable effect on graduates that is distinct from the influence of family, socio-economic background, or church life.
Ontario’s new payday lending rules kicked in this year. They’re supposed to strengthen the hand of consumers who borrow less than $1500 for terms of less than 60 days. But will the rules succeed?
Cardus graded the new regulations according to research drawn from our report “Banking on the Margins: Finding Ways to Build an Enabling Small-Dollar Credit Market”. Here are the results:
What is the impact of schooling experiences on the formation, quality, and stability of marriages and other romantic relationships of young adults? This report brings evidence to bear on the hypothesis that schools contribute to family formation and flourishing.
In the fall of 2017 Cardus Education hosted four by-invitation education policy round tables across Canada.
The empirical results of this paper, which compiles bidding data from a variety of Ontario municipalities over time, suggest that restricting tendering to a select group of firms on the basis of their workers’ affiliations will lead to higher costs for municipalities than if they tendered their projects to all qualified bidders, with the strong possibility that municipalities will pay a substantial magnitude more.
Libby Simon, MSW, discusses the importance of avoiding peer orientation for kids in daycare.
Much academic research and popular media coverage neglects the vital role of religion and religious communities in North American cities. This roundtable report can help stimulate a conversation on how to begin to bridge that gap in your community or sphere of influence. Focusing on the future of both cities and religion, it is the third report in a three-report series on the social and cultural good of religion in the city. Future collaboration in cities requires intentional focus and investment. How will this investment become more difficult in the coming years? How will it get easier? What is necessary for religious faith and spirituality to be seen as vital contributors to the common good that we depend on?
Read the other reports:
Program Director Brian Dijkema responds to a recent article by John Rapley and asks: Why can't economics be more like religion?
Dr. Mark Milke considers the role of family factors in changing rates of poverty and inequality, for the first time in Canada. The data show that the family form with the highest income level (two parents with children) diminished from 71.6 percent of families in 1976 to just 49.8 percent of families in 2014. Family fracturing appears to correlate with changing inequality levels. If we seek solutions to the problems of inequality and poverty, understanding the family angle matters.
The International Monetary Fund recently wrote of coercing Canadian mothers into the workforce. Dr. Chris Sarlo reflected on economic implications here
. Today we learn how Canadian academics and lobbyists have long been making precisely the same wrongheaded point.
Much academic research and popular media coverage neglects the vital role of religion and religious communities in North American cities. This roundtable report can help stimulate a conversation on how to begin to bridge that gap in your community or sphere of influence. Focusing on the state of research into religion, it is the second report in a three-report series on the social and cultural good of religion in the city. What insights does research provide that could inform people and help shape public relations and policy efforts on behalf of the socio-cultural good of religion? What are the stories that need to be told? What do educators, journalists, and cultural influencers need to know? How could this work be undertaken today?
Read the other reports:
Cardus was asked by Ontario's Ministry of Government and Consumer Services to offer feedback on proposed changes to various acts pertaining to payday lending and other financial services in Ontario. We were pleased to see that many of the recommendations that Cardus outlined in Banking on the Margins: Finding Ways to Build an Enabling Small Dollar Credit Market have been taken up by the government in its proposed regulations. However, we continue to caution on the unintended consequences of laws and regulations that might unduly affect consumers who most desperately need access to cash.
For more, read:
Testimony to Standing Committee on Social Policy on Putting Customers First Act (Bill 59)
The new 2016 Census family data has been released. This new information will help us understand how marriage, divorce, cohabitation, and many other indicators are faring in our country. Data comparison with years gone by is more difficult this year, given the way in which Statistics Canada is presenting the data. In many instances, the disparate family forms of cohabitation and marriage are lumped together.
The appeal to "women's equality" is an interesting and convenient device in making their case for a bit of social engineering.
An interview with British psychiatrist Glynn Harrison, author of A Better Story: God, Sex and Human Flourishing
Too much political influence increases the distance between unions and workers at the shop level, causing workers to see the state, not unions, as the primary advocate for the protection of their rights. And this is a disease, maybe even the death knell, for the labour movement.
A spate of media articles has caused Ontario parents real concern. Here’s what happened and where parents should—and should not—be concerned.
Because of historical, cultural, and governmental differences between Quebec and the rest of Canada, we have considered responses from Quebec high school graduates separately from the primary Cardus Education Survey 2016 report. This research brief reports the findings from Quebec, where it seems that schools may be choosing between an emphasis on faith formation or academic and civic formation.