Labour Market Matters - January 2015

Income inequality has risen significantly since the 1980s, with the share of income among the top 1% increasing by 27% between 1980 and 2005. While the widening gap between the rich and poor is concerning, CLSRN affiliates Abigail Payne (McMaster University) and Justin Smith (Wilfrid Laurier University) examine whether the rate of charitable giving may increase as income inequality rises in a new study entitled “Does Income Inequality Increase Charitable Giving?†(CLSRN Working Paper no. 150). The study finds that rising income inequality results in overall increases in charitable giving. During the 1990s, an increase in the number of immigrants and their rising poverty rates (low-income rates) accounted for much of the increase in the overall Canadian poverty rate. However, this pattern changed in the 2000s, when little of the change in the Canadian poverty rates or income inequality was associated with immigration. A study entitled “Immigration, Low Income and Income Inequality in Canada: What’s New in the 2000s†(CLSRN Working Paper no. 148) by CLSRN affiliates Garnett Picot (Queen’s University, Citizenship and Immigration Canada) and Feng Hou (Statistics Canada), examines the direct effect of immigration on low income and family-income inequality. The study finds that overall, the rising immigrant population over the 2000s had little impact on Canadian economic indicators such as the low-income rate, high income rate, income inequality and earnings inequality. These results differ from those observed during the 1990s.