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The data used in this work is drawn from two special surveys of individuals with job separations in particular time periods. These surveys, based on a 10 percent random sample of individuals with Records of Employment (ROE), which are filed whenever a job separation occurs, are matched to administrative UI data and related records. Overall, these data are known as the Canadian Out of Employment Panels (COEPs). To understand their structure, it is necessary to review the history of UI in Canada in the 1990s, since these surveys were implemented chiefly as a means to evaluate these program changes.

There were two major legislative changes in Canadian UI in the 1990s, prior to the recent move to Employment Insurance (EI). These were Bill C-113 in 1993 and Bill C-17 in 1994. The former changes reduced the UI replacement rate from 60 percent to 57 percent of the insurable maximum and significantly tightened the disqualification provisions for unjustified separations (chiefly voluntary quits, butalso covering those dismissed for cause). Taking effect in April 1993, these changes were bracketed by the two intake six week windows for the COEP93 survey which therefore had a natural "Before" and "After" structure. The six weeks exactly around the change itself were excluded from the COEP93 sample, however, to obviate concerns about strategic filing.⁴ Several studies have previously addressed the effects of Bill C-113 using the COEP93 dataset (see, e.g., Crémieux, Fortin, Storer and Van Audenrode 1995; Crossley and Kuhn 1995; Browning, Jones and Kuhn 1995; Browning 1995; and Wong 1995.)

The changes in Bill C-17 were of potentially greater importance. The main replacement rate was further reduced from 57 percent to 55 percent of insurance earnings, although a provision was added that introduced a dependency rate set at 60 percent for low income (less than $390/week) UI beneficiaries with dependents. In addition, entrance requirements to qualify for UI were raised from 10 weeks to 12 weeks in the highest unemployment regions, and there was a change in the formula by which weeks of work earned weeks of UI coverage. There were also some changes in UI premium rates and some additional amendments of the disqualification provisions from Bill C-113. These provisions took effect in two phases, with the qualifyingrequirements being effective from April 1994, while the benefit changes were not implemented until three months later.

It was not possible to conduct a COEP survey in 1994, so there is no exact match of the survey and the UI changes to the COEP93 structure. Instead, a survey was implemented in 1995, using almost identical weekly intake windows as had been used in 1993. The idea was that the "After" group from COEP93 could constitute a group with treatment prior to Bill C-17 (i.e., they would represent the "Before" group for C-17) and the second intake sample from COEP95 would constitute the "After" group for C-17. Since the seasonal timing would be identical for the second cohorts from COEP93 and COEP95, it was thought that seasonal effects in the labour market would not be problematic for the C-17 evaluation, a concern that had been expressed about the earlier round of work on C-113 using the COEP93 survey.

At the outset, three issues should be noted about the joint use of the COEP93 and COEP95 surveys. First, they were collected by different survey houses (Ekos and Statistics Canada, respectively) and there may be some concern about consistency of interviewing patterns, call-backs, response rates and the like. Overall, there is probably little that can be done about this, although a set of sampling weights for COEP93 has been developed that probably improves on the original weights supplied by Ekos (Cater 1996). In what follows, I have investigated use of such weights and those supplied by Statistics Canada, although in both the unconditional and the conditional results, I have found no significant differences from use of weighted or unweighted data.

Second, the survey instruments themselves differed in COEP93 and COEP95. Although there was much effort to secure a high degree of consistency, there remain differences in the data collected and the way in which the data was coded between the two surveys. For present purposes, these changes are fairly minor and typically involve downgrading the information in one survey to the level (coarseness) collected in the other; educational categories are one example of this type of change.

Third, the interviewing structure was quite different between the two surveys. In COEP93, respondents were interviewed (by telephone, using CATI) three times at roughly 26, 39 and 56 weeks, whereas in COEP95, respondents were interviewed (also by telephone, but using a more tightly structuredimplementation of CATI) only twice, at roughly 8 and 12 months.For issues where behaviour at a point in time is of paramount importance, these timing interview in each case is a little over a year from the separation data recorded on the ROE.⁵

Overall, it is important to stress that, although these various differences between COEP93 and COEP95 are present, nonetheless the combined datasets unite survey and administrative data and yield a resource for the study of the effects of UI provisions, and changes in those provisions, that is unrivalled in Canadian data, and perhaps more widely.

The results to be presented below concern the second cohort of each of the two COEPs, thereby controlling for seasonal effects and concentrating attention on the quasi-experimental evaluation of the C-17 changes.⁶ Also, attention is directed to the study of durations following separations categorized (by the ROE reason code) as due to quit, dismissal, short work and other.⁷ As orders of magnitude, quits are around 15-20 percent of total separations, dismissed are less than 5 percent, and short work is something over 50 percent of the total. The "other" group is about 20 percent of total separations and is usually thought of as being similar to the short work category.⁸ Based on much preliminary investigation, and consistent with previous work using the COEP93, I usually investigate either the full sample for these four codes or two sub-samples called VQ/Dis, which is comprised of the first two reason codes mentioned above (voluntary quits and dismissed), and SW/Oth, which is comprised of the other two codes (Short Work and Other).

At the outset, it is worth noting that, based on these data, the percentage eligible for UI (measured at the ROE date of the separation) falls from 67.0 percent in COEP93 to 57.2 percent in COEP95, reflecting the more stringent entitlement rules after Bill C-17. Also, among those eligible, mean weeks of entitlement fall from 44.7 in COEP93 to 34.7 for COEP95, which again seems a large change. Although the replacement rate and other changes are fairly small, these entitlement changes are large enough to suggest that we should expect some sign of their effects in the results.

Footnotes

4	The basic idea is that someone who might anticipate a lengthy period of unemployment could have influenced the exact date of a separation in order to initiate a claim before the date of the change (since the change acted to reduce benefits), whereas this type of behaviour might not have been worth the bother for persons expecting shorter spells. Jones (1994) contains some analysis suggesting that the six week window around the change was likely more than adequate to avoid results from the COEP93 being contaminated by this problem.
5	In some earlier work with these data, before the final interview data were available, the procedure followed was to treat the data from the survey with the longer time from ROE date to interview date as censored at the shorter duration to interview data from the other COEP, as discussed in the initial Methodology Report for this contract. This is rendered unnecessary by the availability of the final interview data.
6	In future work, I shall investigate the C-113 changes using the COEP95 as a control to perform a difference-in-differences analysis (cf. Card 1992, Gruber 1994), thereby using both cohorts from both COEPs. Essentially, this method uses the COEP95 cohorts as seasonal controls to study the 1993 changes, net of any seasonality in the composition of the two cohorts' inflow. The C-17 changes cannot be examined in this way, however, given the structure and timing of the data available.
7	That is, other reason codes from the ROE (such as labour dispute, leave of absence and pregnancy) are not included in the present analysis.
8	There are differences between the two COEPs in these figures, as well as differences between these ROE figures and self-reported reasons supplied as survey responses, but these magnitudes are a good guide.