The rich are getting richer. The poor... well they just remain poor. At least this is what one would gather from the media stories based on the latest data released from Statistics Canada’s 2001Census of Population. For example, the Toronto Star reports that the rich keep on getting richer -- especially in Toronto -- while the rest are just treading water. Unfortunately, this analysis fails to take into account that the incomes of most Canadian families change substantially over the course of their lives.

Many politicians, journalists, and poverty advocates would have us believe the myth that most Canadians are born into, live and die within certain income groups. That is you’re born poor, you live poor and you die poor.

Fortunately, climbing the income ladder in Canada is not a fantasy. The reality for most of us is that where we are now is not where we were then, nor where we will be in the future.

Three years ago Statistics Canada would have counted me among the 10 percent of families with the lowest incomes. I was employed as a teacher’s assistant at Simon Fraser University while grinding away sleepless nights trying to complete my education. Fast forward to 2003 and I am no longer in the bottom 10 percent of income earners although admittedly, I am nowhere close to the top 10 percent.

My experience is not unique. Most young people start out in the low-income group and work up to the middle or high-income group. Given their initial lack of experience, their incomes start out low. Their incomes peak when they hit middle age, the prime earning years, and then begin to fall as they approach retirement.

In addition, many immigrant families, mine included, came to Canada with little. They worked hard, saved, invested, took risks and moved up the income ladder. The result is that there is less inequality in the long term because many families will initially have low incomes followed by middle incomes and possibly high incomes as they move through their life cycles.

Evidence of just how much a family’s income changes over time has been tracked by Statistics Canada’s Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics. Roughly 15,000 Canadian households were questioned for a period of six consecutive years on their labour market activity, income, household composition, and many other variables. Thus the survey captures changes in the economic well-being of individuals and families over time.

Households in the survey were ranked based on their incomes and divided into five equal groups (or quintiles). The bottom group represents the 20 percent of families with the lowest incomes and the top group represents the 20 percent of families with the highest incomes. From 1996 to 1997, 14 percent of families moved up one group and 3.1 percent moved up more than one group. More importantly, nearly one fifth of those families in the bottom 40 percent of families (those in the bottom two groups) found themselves at least one group higher just one year later.

The income mobility of Canadian families is even more evident when the analysis is extended over five years. Nearly 29 percent of all families moved up at least one group in earnings. Again, more importantly, a total of 45 percent of those families in the bottom 40 percent of families (those in the bottom two groups) moved up at least one group over the five-year period of the study.

All of this is not to say that all Canadians are doing better. It does however serve as a caution against ill formed policy analysis. Failure to incorporate Canadians’ income mobility into the discussion results in a misleading depiction of reality. Given that income increases and decreases over an individual’s lifetime, it is clear that an entire lifetime is the proper framework in which to analyze redistributive policies.

The good news in the midst of all the negative press from the latest Statistics Canada Census data is that most young people, with some hard work, can and will live better than their parents. There will undoubtedly always be the poor and the rich among us. However, they are not necessarily the same people from year to year or decade to decade. To quote folk singer Bob Dylan, the slow one now will later be fast...the times they are a changing.