Rethinking the Welfare State: The prospects for ... - e-Library

Notes 249
6 See, for example, Cass Sunstein, Free Markets and Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997) Chapter 3; Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical
Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) Chapter 9; and Peter Drucker, The
New Realities: In Government and Politics, In Economics and Business, In Society and
World View (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), especially Chapter 2, “No more salvation by
society.”
7 Economic Council of Canada, supra note 4, p. 26.
8 See Michael Trebilcock, The Limits of Freedom of Contract (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993), Chapter 7.
9 For a more extensive discussion of this issue centred on post-secondary education, see
Nicholas Barr, The Economics of the Welfare State, 3rd edn (Stanford, GA: Stanford
University Press, 1998), p. 353.
10 This will be the outcome so long as the screening hypothesis does not strictly hold. The
screening hypothesis states that although education beyond a certain point (e.g. literacy and
numeracy) is associated with higher incomes later in life, the education itself is not the cause
of the higher income. The screening hypothesis views more than a basic education as being
an expensive and burdensome signal of ability that employers and others use as a guide to
select talented individuals from the labour market. For a discussion, see ibid., p. 324.
11 For a discussion of the role of government in promoting social solidarity and maintaining
core values in the context of the welfare state, see Albert Weale, “Equality, social solidarity,
and the welfare state,” Ethics, 100(3) (1990), p. 473.
12 Mark Holmes, The Reformation of Canada’s Schools: Breaking the Barriers to Parental
Choice (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998), p. 244.
13 Witte, supra note 2, p. 30.
14 Ibid.
15 Statistics Canada, “Enrolment in elementary and secondary schools,” Catalogue No.81–229–
XIB. The relevant table is available as a digital document at:
http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/educ01.htm.
16 This difference is probably partly due to the fact that Ontario and Quebec, Canada’s two
most populous provinces, provide public funding for Roman Catholic schools, thereby
reducing demand for private Catholic schools relative to the United States.
17 Barr, supra note 9, p. 337.
18 Holmes, supra note 12, p. 32.
19 Federation of Independent Schools in Canada, “Provincial funding of independent schools”
(1999), available at: http://www.direct.ca/fisa/fisc/funding.htm.
20 Many families make decisions about where to live based on their perception of the quality of
the schooling that their children will receive in the local primary and secondary schools.
21 See Chapter 2 of the Economic Council of Canada, supra note 4, from which the data in the
following paragraph are taken.
22 Economic Council of Canada, supra note 4, p. 16.
23 Holmes, supra note 12, p. 116.
24 Ibid., pp. 129–30.
25 This “winnowing” explanation cannot, of course, be complete. Because North American
results from the early stages of elementary school (where presumably there is no winnowing)
are not competitive with the results of the most successful countries, there is undoubtedly
room for improvement in our the provision of at least primary education and most probably
secondary education, as well.
26 On this question generally, see Judith Maxwell, “The social role of the state in a knowledgebased
economy,” in P.Grady, R.Howse and J.Maxwell (eds) Redefining Social Security
(Kingston, Ontario: Queen’s University School of Policy Studies, 1995), pp. 1–45. In
particular, she points out that 35–40 percent of children do not live with both biological
parents because of divorce or separation; a majority of mothers work outside the home.