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1. Towards a Better Understanding of Income Inequality in Canada

   In recent years, income inequality has become one of the most animating—and unfortunately most misunderstood—economic and social issues of our time. Sparked by the 2008-09 recession, the well-deserved backlash against corporate bailouts, the Occupy Wall ...

2. Oxfam report on the wealthy conflates Bill Gates with Carlos Slim

   A recent report from Oxfam has sparked concerns over wealth inequality in Canada. Unfortunately, discussions about wealth inequality too often overlook a critical point—how wealth is accumulated. This matters for any assessment about the ...

3. The decline of the 1% in Canada

   Ever since the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, there has been an ongoing preoccupation with the share of total income earned by the top one per cent. The impression one gets is that the top one per cent’s share of total income is ...

4. Clarifying the facts on child poverty in Canada

   Child poverty rate has actually dropped by a third since 1986. ...

5. In Canada, being born to poor parents doesn’t resign you to same economic fate

   If Canada was a place where children of poor parents could not rise up and improve their economic standing, this would be a troubling state of affairs. After all, it would mean that economic fate is pre-determined. Thankfully, that’s not ...

6. Income mobility is crucial for understanding inequality

   Income inequality is a complex issue all too often presented in simplified terms by many pundits and politicians. For instance, discussions about inequality miss the fact that Canada has a high degree of income mobility, meaning that ...

7. In Canada, the ‘poor’ are getting richer faster than the ‘rich’

   Appeared in the Toronto Sun, April 30, 2016 Only the “rich” are getting richer and advancing economically. Everyone else, well, they aren’t enjoying any economic gains. It’s a common refrain in the media and certainly a story that the federal government ...

8. Low-income Canadians have enjoyed dramatic income gains

   Here’s something you don’t often hear in the media. Canadians across the income distribution, especially those with initially low income, have enjoyed dramatic income gains over the past two decades. So finds our recent study that used ...

9. Income mobility—public policy in Canada can’t ignore the facts of life

   Appeared in the Toronto Sun, April 22, 2016 It may be hard for Canadians to believe, but a key feature of our society is regularly ignored in the discussion and setting of public policies. Whether we’re talking about taxes, income inequality, poverty, or ...

10. Measuring Income Mobility in Canada, 2016

    Too often, an underlying assumption in the income inequality debate is that low- and high-income Canadians are the same people year in and year out. In reality, however, Canadians are not permanently stuck in certain income groups. Over the course of ...