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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.)

This paper examines the implication of the decision to give 2006 Census respondents the option of letting Statistics Canada access their income tax files rather than answering income-related questions directly. We find that giving respondents the option to share their income tax files (or not) adds a confounding factor when it comes to measuring family-income inequality, particularly for the bottom tail of the distribution. The consent decision does not, however, materially affect the estimation of standard wage equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being (LIMEW) to compare living standards and inequality in Canada and the United States. LIMEW includes non-cash government transfers, public consumption, annuitized wealth, and household production and nets out all personal taxes. We compare our results to the standard US Census measure, gross money income (MI). We expected a smaller inter-country gap in median LIMEW than median MI and relatively lower LIMEW inequality in Canada because of the more extensive Canadian welfare state. Instead, we found that the measured gap in the level and inequality of economic well-being was higher based on LIMEW than MI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we re-examine inequality in Canada with a comprehensive look at inequality trends in Atlantic Canada during the period 1969 to 1996. We use consumption expenditure as a measure of family well-being and compare it with the income-based measures of well-being. The results of this study reveal the following: (a) consumption distribution is more equal than the income distribution; (b) inequality trends are sensitive to how family resources are measured; (c) consumption inequality in Atlantic Canada fluctuated considerably until the mid-1980s; and (d) tax and transfer policies have played an important role in reducing income disparities in Atlantic Canada as well as in the rest of Canada. Overall, consumption inequality has continually been lower in Atlantic Canada in comparison to the rest of Canada. The paper also examines the role of key socio-demographic factors using a decomposition methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares recent developments in income inequality in Canada, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition to describing cross-national variation in changes in income inequality, the paper examines different explanatory factors for these recent developments. The findings reported indicate that there is substantial cross-national variation, not only with regard to the level of inequality, but furthermore with regard to changes in inequality. The results indicate that the equalizing effect of welfare state redistribution did not decrease in all countries. By contrast, in all countries there was a universal tendency towards increased inequality in the pre-tax and transfer distribution, although the magnitude of the change differs from country to country. Even though a polarization of the earnings distribution is reported, the results still give no support to cross-national convergence with regard to income inequality during the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been virtually no recent census-based studies on the familial characteristics of black Canadians. The present study is a partial replication and extension of a study on black families published two decades ago by Christensen and Weinfeld (1993) and based on the 1986 Canadian census. The present paper utilizes the 2006 census in order to examine the current conditions of black families in Canada and assess what has changed since 1986 in the composition, marital status, and income of these families. Findings indicate that black families are more culturally heterogeneous than ever. Despite this, racial disparities in family formation and household income have only accentuated since 1986, bearing unique consequences for native and foreign-born black men and women. On the whole, relatively more black Canadians 25-44 years of age were single and never married, divorced, or separated in 2006 than in 1986. Between 1986 and 2006, the disparities in income between black families with young children and the general population have grown larger, both for single and dual parent families. The consequences of higher family instability, lone-parent families, economic insecurity and poverty for black families can only be detrimental for the welfare of children, particularly in a context of racial inequality. These issues deserve to be further investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National and international research documents a relationship between greater economic inequality and higher homicide rates. However, much of this work uses simple cross sections at high levels of aggregation rather than longer time series of cities or districts and lacks controls for a more substantial range of confounding factors. Using longitudinal Canadian provincial-level data over the period 1982 to 2017, we occasionally find a positive correlation between inequality and homicides rates. However, the relationship between income inequality and homicide rates in Canada reverses to become negative when looking at Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs). Moreover, the province-level result between greater inequality and homicide rates also appears to break down once accounting for regional effects. We conclude that much of the literature that finds a relationship between greater economic inequality and homicide rates needs to be re-examined within a longer time and more disaggregated framework. [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 Public Policy is the property of University of Toronto Press 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.)

In this article, we examine the link between innovation and earnings inequality across Canadian cities over the 1996-2006 period. We do so using a novel data set that combines information from the Canadian long-form census and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The analysis reveals that there is a positive relationship between innovation and inequality: cities with higher levels of innovation have more unequal distributions of earnings. Other factors influencing differences in inequality include city size, manufacturing and government employment, the percentage of visible minority in an urban population, and educational inequality. These results are robust to the use of different measures of inequality, innovation, alternative specifications, and instrumental variables estimations. Questions are thus raised about how the benefits of innovation are distributed in society and the long-term sustainability of such trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of international trade on wages and on wage inequality across industries and regions in Canada. An employer–employee dataset is developed combining individual worker characteristics from the 20% sample of the 2001 Census of Population and synthetic establishments from the 1999 Annual Survey of Manufactures. Results from wage regression models show that import competition from low-income countries has a significant impact on wage inequality in Canada, pushing down the wages of less-educated workers relative to those of highly educated workers. The negative effect of import competition on the wages of less-skilled workers is shown to be more pronounced in Québec and in the Prairie provinces, as well as in labor-intensive and product-differentiated industries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]