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Copyright of Papers in Regional Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Gini coefficient for disposable income for Canada in 2019 was approximately the same level it was at in 1995. Underlying this flat recent long‐term pattern is an increase in the level of market earnings inequality in the 1980s and 1990s that Canada shared with other countries followed by a continuing period of flatness in that measure as well. This trend interacted with changes in policy that have, at times, offset earnings inequality trends and at other times exacerbated them. In this paper, we describe these trends and the combination of market and policy forces that drove them. We conclude that explanations rooted in ongoing technology or globalisation forces are less relevant than explanations based on deeper structural changes in the labour market. Those changes affecting earnings inequality were ultimately fully offset by changes in the tax and transfer system as well as labour market policies such as the minimum wage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper studies the evolution of individual earnings inequality and dynamics in Canada from 1983 to 2016 using tax files and administrative records. Linking individual tax filers to their employers (and rich administrative records on firms) beginning in 2001, it also documents the relationship between the earnings dynamics of workers and the size and growth of their employers. It highlights three main patterns over this period: First, with a few exceptions (sharp increase in top 1% and declining gender gap), Canada has experienced relatively modest changes in overall earnings inequality, volatility, and mobility between 1983 and 2016. Second, earnings inequality and the distribution of earnings growth vary substantially over the business cycle. Third, the earnings dynamics of individuals are strongly related to the size and employment growth of their employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Geographer is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Over the past two decades, a number of countries have experienced appreciation in house prices at the same time that aggregate consumption has increased. This paper tests alternative hypotheses for this phenomenon by using repeated household surveys from Australia and Canada to identify the transmission mechanism that links consumption and household wealth. The empirical analysis suggests that neither a direct wealth effect nor a common causal factor likely accounts for the observed correlation between wealth and consumption in these two countries. Rather, indirect factors such as collateral effects arising from relaxation of credit constraints are a more likely explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In several recent papers models have been developed to explain either why particular goods have been socialized or, more generally, the 'size of government.' In this paper we develop a version of these models to explain the decision in Canada to move to a system of socialized medical insurance to the mid-1960s. Income distribution data is then used to largely confirm that the model appears consistent as an explanation of the federal-provincial structure that has arisen and of the conflicts that have resulted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to forge a link between Canadian macro and micro data relating to the household sector. The analysis is in three parts. The first part begins with National Accounts data on the personal sector. These data are adjusted to remove transactions relating to non-biological persons, so that the result is income and expenditure for the household sub-sector. The second part starts with the annual household survey used to collect income distribution data. These survey data are augmented in various ways to account for under-reporting and to add information from other micro data sets— particularly the periodic survey of household expenditure patterns and a sample of individual income tax returns. The result is a comprehensive, albeit partially synthetic, household micro data set. In the final part of the paper these two largely independent data sets are compared, and the general quality of the results is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents information on the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data in analysing the levels and trends of income inequality in five countries. Inequality increased in Sweden, Great Britain and the United States but did not increase in Canada and the Netherlands. Increased inequality of household head's earnings and increased shares of spouse's earnings in family income account for much of the observed increases in income inequality. The public sector can, in general, be assigned a moderating effect on these changes. Demographic shifts are not assigned any major role in inequality changes. The two distinctive features of this paper are that it examines the trends in inequality in disposable income among the whole population in the five countries using comparable data, and it examines which broad sets of explanations are and which are not compatible with the observations, using a unified framework.

Abstract. This paper attempts to determine empirically how the size distribution of income is affected by cyclical fluctuations in macro-economic activity. As a preliminary exercise we examine which summary measures of inequality are likely to reveal useful information about the effect of cyclical fluctuations and conclude that percentile shares are more informative than the Gini index. Using data on individual tax returns for Canada for the period 1947 to 1978 we find that neither the rate of inflations nor the level of unemployment has a significant effect on the Gini index or the quintile shares; the aggregate participation rote on the other hand, has a significant equalizing effect. Models are also estimated for the bottom and top decile. The bottom decile model Shows significant equalizing effects for both increases in employment and participation rates. In the top decile model we produce some evidence that increases in the profit share increase inequality. In both decile models the effect of inflation is weak or non-existent. The absence of any substantial impact of inflation on the: size distribution is an interesting result of our study, but more work is required to determine whether this conclusion can be sustained under alternative models and income definitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sub-provincial regional income multipliers in the Ontario economy: an input-output approach. This paper considers the feasibility of reducing regional income disparities by selective expansion of particular industrial groups. An input-output model is developed, and data for forty-eight industries and ten economic regions of Ontario are employed as a case study to deduce regional income multipliers. The empirical results of the study indicate that regional income differentials can be reduced relative to the 'central core' if industries for expansion are carefully chosen. But, in general, growth in any outlying region relative to the 'central core' is difficult to achieve. The model and the derivations of regional total and wage income multipliers represent a potentially fruitful approach to the analysis of regional economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been considerable public debate in Canada on the merits of proposals to extend coverage under the public earnings-related pension system (the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans or C/QPP) to homemakers. This paper presents an analysis of one such proposal put forward by a Parliamentary Committee in 1983. The analysis considers both the likely costs and the redistributional impact of this homemaker pension proposal, based on a Monte Carlo life-cycle microsimulation model. The main results are first that the proposal tends to be mildly redistributive from higher to lower lifetime income groups. Secondly, the proposal is of not as much benefit to women as might be expected—it is almost equal in value to men and women. This later conclusion is the result of the fact that the homemaker pension provision was part of a package that also included splitting of pension credits accrued during marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Occupy movement catalyzed public debate on the issue of growing income inequality. This paper examines recent patterns of inequality in Canada, paying particular attention to changes in the characteristics of the top 1% of income earners. At the national level, the gap between the top percentile and the other 99% has widened considerably: in 2006, 11% of the nation's income was concentrated in the hands of top earners (whose mean income of $344,000 is 11 times that of the average Canadian) compared with 7.7% just 15 years earlier. Beneath such national-level figures lie important geographical differences in the income hierarchy: the thresholds, average incomes and socio-economic characteristics of the top 1% vary widely across provinces and cities. Among the most important spatial shifts observed is the growing concentration of high-income groups in energy-rich Western Canada, where Calgary has become the most unequal city in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper analyzes the income distributional consequences of Canadian prairie freight rate proposals within a simple general equilibrium context and casts the results in terms of the concept of a regional burden. The fact that some factors are both sector and region specific is emphasized in the discussion of the political economy of freight rate reform. The results suggest that in the short run farmers bear the brunt of the adjustment and the food industry is the main beneficiary. The aggregate real income loss is surprisingly small in light of the controversy regarding rate revisions. In the longer run, when most factors are mobile, the revisions lead to a small, across-the-board contraction of output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the empirical significance of the principle of compensating differentials for the occupational distribution of earnings in Canada. The estimated earnings equation relates differentials in earnings to differences in human capital investments of workers, training requirements, and other non-pecuniary characteristics of occupational employments. The evidence suggests that wage differentials are primarily 'equalizing differentials': workers receive higher pay in compensation for their higher schooling and work experience and for undertaking jobs that are risky, insecure, and require higher levels of general educational development and specific vocational preparation. The evidence also confirms the findings of hedonic wage equations that returns to schooling and experience may be biased when occupational requirements are not controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract. In this paper, the distribution of lifetime purchasing power for a large sample of Canadian households is examined. The study differs from most distributional studies in two ways. First, it annuitizes an estimate of lifecycle earnings and so is capable of encompassing variations in earnings which occur over the lifecycle. Second, it focuses on the joint distribution of income and wealth in that the annuity distribution generated incorporates both lifecycle earnings and net assets. The degree of inequality associated with the distribution of annuities is found to be less than that associated with the more traditional measures of inequality, such as the distribution of wealth or income or earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with measurement of the size distribution of personal wealth in Canada, The only available estimates of this distribution are those provided on the occasions when Statistics Canada's Survey of Consumer Finance has surveyed assets and debts. Results of the latest ‘SCF’ to do this, that of 1977, are not yet available. The paper shows that the previous study, conducted in 1970, indicated wealth-inequality as viewed by top quantile shares roughly of the same order as estimated by others for the U.S. and U.K. A comparison of asset and debt aggregates implied by the survey, however, with independent totals indicates that for almost all items the SCF likely under-estimated true holdings. The possible relative importance of sampling and non-sampling errors in explaining this distortion is considered, drawing on Monte Carlo evidence and American validation studies of survey response. It is concluded that sampling error is unlikely to provide the explanation for SCF discrepancies in aggregates, but that non-sampling error is capable of doing so. Finally the 1970 SCF distribution of wealth is re-estimated. First a correction is made for hypothetical differential response according to true net worth. Second an attempt is made to remove the effects of under-reporting by respondents. The ‘best-guess’ re-estimated distribution exhibits mean net worth considerably greater than shown by the SCF but only a slightly greater degree of concentration. Under certain fundamental assumptions this result is surprisingly robust. The appropriate conclusion is not that survey estimates of the distribution of wealth are reliable, but that the strong non-sampling errors affecting the 1970 Canadian SCF wealth estimates may have been composed of almost completely offsetting sources of bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a part of a larger study of economic growth in Canada, following the methods developed by Edward Denison in his book The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the publication Why Growth Rates Differ. The new material in this paper relates to Canada and the Canadian/U.S. comparison, while the material on Northwest Europe is drawn from the Brookings study. The present paper sets out the results to date on the differences in real output per employed person between Canada and the United States for one year, 1960. At this stage in our research the results indicate that the level of real output per employed person in Canada was about 20 per cent lower than in the United States in that year. On the basis of historical output data, it would appear that this margin of difference in Canadian/U.S. product levels has persisted throughout the present century. The central part of this paper examines the significance of differences in factor inputs in Canada and the United States and their contribution to the difference in income. The level of inputs per employed person in Canada accounts for only about 2 percentage points of the income difference between Canada and the United States. These results indicate that the overwhelming part of the difference in output per employed person between the two countries reflects the differences in output in relation to total factor inputs, rather than the magnitude of other factor inputs used in combination with labour. This result is consistent with earlier studies by Denison and others which have indicated the crucial importance of output in relation to total factor inputs, both in output growth over time and intercountry comparisons of output level. The body of the paper can give only brief attention to the numerous conceptual and statistical questions that arise in such a wide-ranging study, and the authors do not pretend to have tackled, let alone resolved, all of the wide range of problems related to this study. Nor do they claim any high degree of precision for the results, especially in the light of the statistical limitations of the basic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explored socioeconomic gradients in self‐rated overall health (SROH) using indicators of materialist (educational attainment and perceived income adequacy) and psychosocial perspectives (subjective social status (SSS)) among adults living in countries with varying levels of income inequality, and the importance of psychosocial stress in mediating these associations. If psychosocial processes at the individual and societal levels correspond, associations between SSS and SROH should be higher among adults in countries with higher income inequality, and psychosocial stress should be a more important mediator of these associations. We used multigroup structural equation models to analyse cross‐sectional data from the International Food Policy Study of adults (n = 22,824) in Australia, Canada, Mexico, the UK and the United States. Associations between SSS and SROH were not higher in more unequal countries, nor was psychosocial stress a more important mediator of these associations. Inequities in SROH in more unequal countries may not predominantly reflect stress‐related pathways of social status differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Women make up almost half the Canadian labour force and more than 50% of post‐secondary students. However, in natural resources (NR) industries (energy, mining, forestry), they represent less than 20% of the workforce, face persistent wage gaps, hold traditionally gendered roles (in sales, administrative and support services) instead of technical or managerial positions, and are persistently absent from leadership roles. Retention of women is also a big challenge in these industries: many tend to leave their jobs within the first five years of employment, and/or after one or more maternity leaves. Women are very poorly represented in leadership positions (as senior executives and board members) despite significant evidence that gender diversity in leadership is good for business. Findings from our study of the status of women in NR employment in Canada produced concrete policy recommendations for recruiting, retaining, and promoting women in energy, mining, and forestry. Although these are intended specifically for Canadian organisations, they may also be relevant for other countries where women are underrepresented in NR industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redistribution of income through regulation creates uncertainty about the stability and longevity of the new income stream. Since it is politically created, the income stream is likely to vary independently of the returns to other assets. A risk-averse beneficiary should diversify his portfolio. In the case of agricultural supply management in Canada, restrictions upon the transfer of quota between producers raises the cost of diversifying. Consequently, producers absorb the regulatory risk themselves, This imperfection in the market for those risky assets created by Canadian agricultural policy appreciably raises the estimated social cost of such programs above the levels reported in previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex discrimination in faculty salaries: a case study. Data concerning faculty at Memorial University of Newfoundland for 1973-74 are used to investigate possible sex discrimination of faculty salaries. A large salary differential between the sex arises largely from differences in training and experience, but substantial unexplained differences remain between men and women who seem to be professionally equivalent. Taking into account possible discrimination in promotions more than doubles these differentials, while such productivity variables as we included have the anticipated effect of substantially reducing them. The analysis suggests that specification errors in previous discrimination studies may have had substantial effects on the estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deals with the effects of the national policy tariffs on farm implements on the level and distribution of Prairie income in the development phase of the Canadian wheat economy. Development of a model of Prairie agriculture; Use of the model to derive hypothetical output and income shares in the absence of the tariff; Calculation of the impact of the tariff.

Studies changes in family income and consumption inequality in Canada, between 1978 and 1992. Cross-sectional distribution of consumption; Characteristics of the distribution of lifetime wealth.

This paper explores the sensitivity of the size distribution of family income in Canada to alternative definitions of income. These alternative definitions examine both wealth generally in the form of an annuity equivalent, and home ownership in the form of imputed rent. An adjustment for family size differences is also made. The impact of these adjustment is assessed for average incomes, inequality, and the incidence of low income for different age groups. The adjustments do have significant effects that vary by age; in particular, the economic position of the elderly seems understated by the usual data. Also, methodological considerations, such as the direct use of micro data and the choice of inequality indicator are shown to be significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the estimates of a complete production function focusing on the neutrality of technical progress and implications of factor substitution and income distribution in Canada. Description and analyses of the result for total manufacturing in 1926 to 1939 and 1946 to 1961; Assumptions on the nature of the production function; Industries that showed a positive rate of automation.

A gap in estimates of the personal distribution of Canadian wealth between 1902 and 1970 is partly filled, using estate multiplier estimates for 1945–1968. The historical record is extended by adjusting the upper tail in survey results since 1970 to make it consistent with respected journalists' "rich lists." Top wealth shares decline from 1892 to 1902 and from 1945 to the late 1960s, consistent with the downward trend in most advanced western countries over much of the 20th century. Since 1984 there has been a clear upward trend in wealth inequality in Canada, as in many other countries, and in the United States. Currently, wealth inequality is higher in Canada than in the U.K. and much of continental Europe, somewhat lower than Austria or Germany, and distinctly lower than the U.S. Contrasts between Canada and the U.S. in wealth inequality trends are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Replies to the comments on the author's article on concentration, unionization and distribution of income in Canadian manufacturing industry. Choice of non-wage value-added as a dependent variable; Inclusion of the capital-labor ratio among regression variables.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article documents the evolution of income inequality during Canada's major fiscal consolidation of the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, one of the most spectacular fiscal turnarounds in recent economic history. Our main objective is to understand why overall market income inequality rose between 1986 and 1996, while that of disposable income did not. To analyse this question, we use data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and two distinct decomposition methodologies. Our results show that both the automatic stabilisation effect of transfer programmes and the rise in personal income taxes explain the performance of the Canadian tax and transfer system in offsetting market income inequality growth during the fiscal consolidation decade. Canada's fiscal consolidation episode, which placed more weight on rising taxes than on cuts in transfer programmes, was thus an inequality reducing factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Geographer is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Objective. To improve on the existing research on earnings differentials between visible minority immigrants and the native-born, and on the role of discrimination in producing that difference. To do this we introduce into the analysis: (1) access to training and (2) training effects on earnings growth. Method. Using a panel data set containing information on training we test cross-sectional models of access to training, cross-sectional models of wage determination, and panel models of wage growth. Results. Visible minority immigrants are disadvantaged in both access to training and earnings; education reduces the disadvantage; and they do better than the other two groups in wage growth. Conclusions. Some results are consistent with a discrimination interpretation but, considered together, the complete sets of results are difficult to reconcile with any relatively straightforward discrimination account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the permanent income and relative income hypotheses have been introduced in past research to explain consumer behaviour, no previous attempt was undertaken to integrate them in one model. In this article, the hypotheses were synthesized into a single model. The model was empirically tested using data from the 1996 Canadian Family Expenditure Survey. The results indicate that household consumption behaviour is generally explained by both hypotheses when integrated into one model, contrary to previously treating them as mutually exclusive hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the poverty of ethnic and immigrant groups in Canada. Factors blamed for the mixed results of research on immigrants' socio-economic performances; Failure of indices based on average income to reveal the status of low-income immigrants; Comparison based on their ethnic origin, period of immigration, age at immigration and geographical location.

Examines the increase in inequality and polarization of employment earnings in Canada, and assesses household incomes in the metropolitan areas. Use of the Gini coefficient as a measure of inequality in geography; Importance of the distribution of income in the social differentiation of space; Details on the concept of inequality.

The only periodic data available in Canada on the asset holdings and net worth of the household sector are data collected through a series of household surveys originally initiated in 1954. Some limited data on the holdings of financial claims by the personal and unincorporated business sector are available from flow of funds work. Data are unavailable for estimation from estate tax returns. The scope of the surveys has been expanded substantially so that the most recent survey obtained a very comprehensive list of asset holdings. The experience with Canadian surveys has been similar to that of other countries; surveys appear to underestimate asset holdings although the estimates are more reliable for widely held assets than for assets with a very skewed distribution. Nevertheless, the surveys appear to trace the accumulated distribution of personal savings over time to a considerable degree and provide useful cross-sectional trend data. Canadian data show that wealth is more unequally distributed among family units than is income although wealth appears to be more equally distributed between income groups than is income. Wealth is also very unequally distributed within the same income group. Over time, there appears to have been some movement towards a more equal distribution of asset holdings between income groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assesses how the unionization of labor and the presence of buyers possessing monopsony power affects the distribution of income among the factors of production in manufacturing industry in Canada. Types of income distribution; Effect of antitrust policies on the distribution of income between labor, capital and group of workers.

Income inequality in Canada has not changed significantly over the past two decades, though this apparent stability may be surprising in view of the major economic and social changes that occurred over this period. The share of income going to the bottom quintile remains at about four percent while the top quintile continues to receive about 40 percent of income. Social trends such as lower fertility rates have coincided with increased female labour force participation lo increase family incomes in the middle and upper-middle parts of the income spectrum. At the same time, the trend for baby boom children to establish their own separate households, and increased divorce and separation rates, have tended to create more small family units with low incomes. These social trends, in isolation of other factors, would have increased income inequality. However, economic factors have apparently offset these tendencies. Since employment income is concentrated in the middle and upper-middle ranges, the relative fall in this source of income over the past two decades tended to be equalizing. Similarly, the fact that a large part of total investment income accrues to the elderly who have below average income implies that the trend towards high interest rates has been equalizing. Finally, the social ‘safety nets’ put in place in the mid-1960s and early 1970s have grown in relative importance, and this too has had an equalizing impact on the distribution of income. Given the overall stability in income inequality, the equalizing tendencies of economic factors such as high interest rates and relatively slow economic growth, with the large automatic responsiveness of governments' social safety net programs, appear to have just about exactly offset the disequalizing social factors of ‘baby boomers’ leaving home, lower fertility, higher divorce and separation rates, and higher female labour force participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the concept of wage spillover defined as the influence of one industry's wage change to another industry's wages. The concept is examined based on two statistical findings namely, within the durable goods sector of the U.S. marked spillover processes exist and within the Canadian durable goods no such mechanisms are found. A simplistic bargaining model is used to analyze wage spillovers, bargainers are constrained by economic and political realities into a range of wage prices while the firm is limited in its ability to pay and the bargaining agent is limited in what he can accept for the employees. The U.S. market meets the conditions for the development of a spillover relationship.

Presents estimates of intercounty income redistribution through Ontario grant programs in 1961. Review of the differences of counties and regions of Ontario in population, income, wealth and urbanization; Role of grants and equity considerations; Forms of redistribution.