Using data from a large Canadian longitudinal dataset, we examine whether earnings of wives and teenagers increase in response to layoffs experienced by husbands. We find virtually no evidence of an “added worker effect†for the earnings of teenagers. However, we find that among...

Canadian apprenticeship policy has recently turned to direct subsidies for participants, including a federal tax incentive for employers. Some assumptions underlying the employer subsidy are: that apprenticeship training is a principal contributor to the skilled trades labour supply; that...

We develop and estimate a generalized labour supply model that incorporates work effort into the standard consumption-leisure trade-off. We allow workers a choice between two contracts: a piece rate contract, wherein he is paid per unit of service provided, and a mixed contract, wherein he...

Household production is an important non-market activity and the empirical literature has developed different methods towards valuing household production without, however, providing a rigorous theoretical foundation for the various approaches. We follow the literature spawned by Becker (1965)...

The paper provides a generalization of Becker’s theory of the allocation of time. The paper assumes that household time plays three roles: as leisure, household work and household labour supply, with separate utility valuations for each use of time. The paper also considers the case where...

The Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) represents one of the largest transfer programs administered by the Canadian government, representing 4.5 percent of federal transfers to individuals. The UCCB – which provides $100 monthly to parents for every child under six years of age –...

I study the effect of a universal child-related income transfer on the labour supply of married individuals. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, I find the Canadian Universal Child Care Benefit has significant negative income effects. The likelihood of lower-educated mothers to...

The incomes, hours of work and co-residency behavior of older immigrants in Canada are analyzed using data from the confidential master files of the Canadian Census for the years 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006. Older immigrants in Canada have lower incomes than the Canadian-born of the same age range...

Despite a history built on immigration, immigrants are among those who struggle the most in Canada. Recent research finds that the proportion of recent immigrants (in Canada for 5 years or less) who were in poverty has risen steadily from 24.6% in 1980 to 47% in 1995, before falling to 36% in...

Data from the 2002 and 1994 General Social Survey are used to analyze the determinants of retiring due to mandatory retirement and the expected age of retirement in Canada. Changes between 1994 and 2002 are decomposed into a component attributable to shifts in the composition of respondents and...