Low income and inequality

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  • Articles and reports: 11F0019M2008311
    Geography: Canada
    Description:

    This paper examines the variability of workers' earnings in Canada over the 1982-to-2000 period by a graphical descriptive approach using the Longitudinal Administrative Data base file. Following Gottschalk and Moffitt (1994), we decompose the total variance of workers' earnings into a 'permanent' or long-run component between workers and a 'transitory' or year-to-year earnings instability component over time for given workers. The decomposition is applied to a five-year moving window. Several results are found. First, the general rise in total earnings variance over the period reflects quite different patterns of change for its separate components. Long-run earnings inequality has generally increased over the period, while year-to-year earnings instability has pretty steadily decreased. Changes in the total earnings variability have been driven primarily by changes in long-run earnings inequality. Second, the patterns of change in the two variance components showed substantial differences between men and women. Since the early 1990s, long-run earnings inequality continued to rise for men, but it markedly decreased for women. Since the late 1980s, earnings instability fell quite steadily for women, but it showed a more cyclical pattern for men. Third, the patterns across ages of the two variance components are almost opposite. Long-run earnings inequality generally rises with age, so it is markedly highest among older-age workers. Earnings instability, in contrast, generally declines with age, so it is markedly highest among entry-age workers.

    Release date: 2008-12-18

  • Articles and reports: 75F0002M2008006
    Geography: Province or territory
    Description:

    Comparisons of low income between regions may have impacts on policy choices. However, it is often argued that rankings of distributions are not robust and that they are also quite sensitive to methods of defining low income. This paper avoids these problems by using a stochastic dominance approach to compare regional low income profiles in Canada without arbitrarily specifying a low-income line. This analysis is carried out for the 10 provinces using the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics for 2000. Robustness of the results is also verified with respect to different choices of spatial price deflators and equivalence scales. The extent to which the findings are sensitive to the choice of an absolute or a relative concept of low income is also examined. We show that, in most cases, dominance relations can be determined and regional low income can be ordered for a wide range of low-income lines. We also show that dominance results are robust to the choice of equivalence scales, while rank reversal occurs when alternative cost-of-living deflators are used. Switching from an absolute to a relative low-income concept only affects low-income rankings for Ontario, Quebec and the Prairie provinces, but not in the case of other provinces. Nevertheless, for all scales, we find that low income is greatest in British Columbia.

    Release date: 2008-10-09

  • Articles and reports: 75-001-X200810513209
    Geography: Canada
    Description:

    The general view is that teenage childbearing will have long-term negative effects on the well-being of the mother-- she may have more difficulty completing high school, which means she may be less likely to pursue postsecondary education and acquire skills for better jobs. Since low-skilled jobs tend to pay less, teenage mothers would have a higher likelihood of living in low income. This study looks at women aged 30 to 39 to determine whether teenage childbearing is related to lower long-term socioeconomic characteristics, with the focus on educational attainment, labour force participation, and living in low income.

    Release date: 2008-06-18

  • Articles and reports: 75-001-X200810513210
    Geography: Canada
    Description:

    There was almost no change in the proportion of children under age 18 living in a low-income family from 1989 to 2004, despite government interventions and a strong economy since the 1990/1992 recession. In addition, the disparity between well-off and low-income children increased, the economic situation of families of well-off children having improved. Family situation and parents, insufficient employment had the greatest influence on children's vulnerability to low income. It is a changing phenomenon, as few children remain in low income for several consecutive years.

    Release date: 2008-06-18

  • Articles and reports: 75F0002M2008004
    Description:

    Low income cut-offs (LICOs) are income thresholds, determined by analysing family expenditure data, below which families will devote a larger share of income to the necessities of food, shelter and clothing than the average family would. To reflect differences in the costs of necessities among different community and family sizes, LICOs are defined for five categories of community size and seven of family size.

    Low income Measures (LIMs), on the other hand, are strictly relative measures of low income, set at 50% of adjusted median family income. These measures are categorized according to the number of adults and children present in families, reflecting the economies of scale inherent in family size and composition. This publication incorporates a detailed description of the methods used to arrive at both measurements. It also explains how base years are defined and how LICOs are updated using the Consumer Price Index.

    Release date: 2008-06-04

  • Articles and reports: 11F0019M2008309
    Geography: Canada
    Description:

    The deterioration of immigrants' entry earnings in Canada in the past three decades has been well documented. This study provides further insights into the changing fortunes of immigrants by focusing on their earnings inequality and earnings instability. The analysis is based on a flexible econometric model that decomposes earnings inequality into current and long-term components. In addition to constructing earnings inequality and earnings instability profiles for different arrival cohorts, we also examine the underlying causes of earnings inequality, including the impact of foreign education, birthplace and the ability to speak English or French.

    Release date: 2008-04-09

  • Articles and reports: 21-006-X2007004
    Geography: Canada
    Description:

    The objective of this paper is to document the characteristics of the rural and urban working poor specifically, those individuals living in a low-income economic family unit in 2003, who were not full-time students and who worked for pay for at least one hour in 2003. We then present some of the factors associated with their situation.

    Release date: 2008-01-14
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