Income inequality on the rise: census
Vancouver Sun/Canwest News Service
Eric Beauchesne
May 01, 2008

OTTAWA - Income inequality in Canada has increased, creating a widening gap between the rich and the rest and one that is only partially offset by the tax system.

But overall, there's been little growth in the after-inflation earnings of Canadians over the past quarter century, Statistics Canada said Thursday in its latest report on its findings from the 2006 census.

And that's despite a period that witnessed strong economic growth as well as substantial increases in both the educational attainment and experience of the workforce, it added.

What earnings growth there has been has gone mostly to those at the top of the income ladder, dramatically widening the gap between them and the rest, a trend that has continued this decade and accelerated for those at the top and those at the bottom, the findings suggest.

"Earnings of full-time full-year earners rose for those at the top of the earnings distribution, stagnated for those in the middle and declined for those at the bottom," Statistics Canada said in its report Thursday on changes since 1980 in median earnings of individuals, the level at which as many are earning more as less.

"As was the case during the 1980s and the 1990s, earnings grew faster between 2000 and 2005 among workers in the upper segments of the earnings distribution than among those at the bottom," it said…

Those in the top 20 per cent of earners saw their earnings rise 16.4 per cent over the quarter century, including a 6.2 per cent gain since 2000, while those in the bottom 20 per cent saw theirs shrink 20.6 per cent since 1980, including a 3.1 per cent drop this decade. Those in the middle 20 per cent saw only a marginal 0.1 per cent rise since 1980 despite a 2.4 per cent gain since 2000.

The gap between what immigrants and native-born Canadians earn also widened, both over the 25 years and over the most recent five years.

In 2005, men who were recent immigrants earned only 63 cents for each dollar earned by native-born men down from 85 cents in 1980, while the earnings of recent immigrant women fell to 56 cents of what Canadian born women earned from 85 cents.

Meanwhile, the gender gap in earnings among younger workers aged 25 to 29, after narrowing steadily over the past two decades, remained unchanged through the first half of this decade with women earning 85 per cent of what men did, the same as in 2000…

Most high earners were also highly educated, the report said, noting that while university-educated people accounted for only about one-quarter of full-time workers they made up 57 per cent of those earning $100,000 or more and 65.3 per cent of those earning at least $150,000.

The growth in high earnings was also concentrated in a relatively few occupations, many related to management, finance, oil extraction, and health and law….

Among families, the census found that couples with children continued to have the highest median incomes of all family types at $82,943 up a hefty 21.6 per cent from 1980 and 5.4 per cent from 2000, the increase being due in large part to the increase in dual-earner families.

The report notes, however, that couples with children, once the dominant type of family, now account for only 46.2 per cent down from 56.3 per cent a quarter of a century ago, while the proportion of couples with no children at home has increased to 37 per cent from 30.3 per cent….