Tracking Those in Poverty

Telling Tales: Living the Effects of Social Policy is one of those books that come out every so often destined to be a landmark. It does something that few policy analyses ever do: ground itself in the lived experience of those affected by social policy change. It will be essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the effects of social policy, both intended and unintended, on those who live the experience.

In a nutshell, Telling Tales follows the lives of 40 families in Ontario, many of whom were on low incomes and received social assistance (welfare) from 1997 to 2000, a time in which the Harris government followed an agenda of social service cutbacks. We get very real insights into the lives of the 40 families and see the equally real consequences of the social policy directions taken in Ontario and many other North American jurisdictions in the late 1990s.

The 40 mostly low-income families take us for a long ride through a...