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 study the relationship between age and literacy skills in Canada, Norway and the U.S. – countries that represent a wide range of literacy outcomes -- using data from the 1994 and 2003 International Adult Literacy Surveys. In cross-sectional data there is a weak negative partial...

Literacy is central to the improvement and betterment of any society. Individuals cannot fully engage in social and political discourse, and are more likely to become less-than-equals in society without basic literacy to pursue their goals. On the individual level, more literate individuals tend...

L’alphabétisme est capital pour l’amélioration de toute société. Tout un chacun ne peut participer entièrement au discours social et politique, et aura sans doute une position inférieure en société, s’il ne possède pas l’alphabétisme de base lui permettant d’atteindre ses...

We utilize the 2000 cohort of university graduates from the National Graduate Survey (NGS) to estimate the extent to which the choice of field of study is influenced by expected returns to those fields of study. The expected returns are based on earnings equations estimated from the earlier 1990...

A detailed longitudinal dataset is assembled containing annual performance and biographical data for every player over the entire history of professional major league baseball. The data are then aggregated to the team level for the period 1920-2009 in order to test whether teams built on a more...

Although contractual mandatory retirement at a specified age has been eliminated, or limited, in many Western nations, the practice remains widespread in other parts of the world. In South Korea (henceforth, Korea) most workers are subject to contractual mandatory retirement, often while still...

The distribution of income among seniors in Canada has changed substantially over the past decade, reflecting an overall increase in income and an increase in income inequality. In this study I decompose the distribution of income among senior couples to determine the extent to which changes in...

We study the propensity of disabled persons to engage in volunteer activity with the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS) -- a unique Canadian dataset which provides extensive information on disabled persons as well as volunteering behaviour. Our principal focus is on the effects...

Our topic is the receipt patterns of low-income support benefits in the form of the guaranteed income supplement (GIS) benefit amongst Canadians who are 65 and older. The GIS regime is the only means-tested public retirement benefit that is targeted to the group of retired individuals and...