Joint ISER/Department of Economics Seminar – When Can Experimental Evidence Mislead? A Re-Assessment of Canada’s Self Sufficiency Project

This paper argues that the conclusions that have been reached on the basis of a well-known welfare-to-work experiment — the Self Sufficiency Project — need to be re-assessed because of policy changes that took place during the SSP Demonstration. Our evidence indicates that because of these policy changes the behavior of the control group did not provide an appropriate counterfactual. We estimate what the impacts of the SSP financial incentive would have been in a stable policy environment. This re-assessment leads to significant changes in the lessons previously reached on the basis of the SSP Demonstration.