It is well known that in the United States the education premium--the ratio of the earnings of university graduates to the earnings of high school graduates--has risen sharply in the last twenty years. Some Canadian economists and policy makers presume the same fact holds in Canada. Since so...

For the years 1981 to 1997 the Survey of Consumer Finances served as the main source of information about the earnings of individuals, households and families. The Survey of Labour Income Dynamics, begun in 1993, was intended to replace and to improve upon the SCF. The Labour Force Survey which...

We present a measure of the correlation between the education levels of spouses based on a bivariate ordered probit model. The change in this correlation over time can be measured while controlling for the large changes in the educational attainment levels. The model is estimated with data from...

The recent "Romanow" and "Kirby" inquiries into the Canadian health care system recommended a publicly funded catastrophic prescription drug insurance program to protect Canadians from potentially ruinous drug costs. While the Romanow commission was not specific about the nature of such a...

In 1988, marginal personal income tax rates changed in Canada, for some individuals by reasonably substantial amounts. This note examines a large sample of tax-filer data and finds little convincing evidence of any effect on contributions to Registered Retirement Saving Plans (RRSPs).

Canadian household prescription drug expenditures are studied using different years of the Statistics Canada Family Expenditure Survey. Master files are used, expanding the number of available years and permitting provincial rather than regional identifiers. Nonparametric Engel curves are...

This is a review article of three books that deal with the problems facing the U.S. Social Security system. One deals with the OASDI (Old- Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance) financial shortfall and proposes an alternative plan with both a tier one benefit and a tier two provision based on...

Federal tax reform in 1988 flattened the Canadian personal income tax schedule, changing the marginal tax rates for many individuals. Using methods similar to those applied by Auten and Carroll (1999) in the study of the effects of the 1986 U.S. Tax Reform Act, we estimate the responsiveness of...

About 6% of seniors in Canada have family incomes below the Low-Income Measure. (The Low-Income Measure is 50% of the median family income, adjusted for family size, and is a commonly used, if arbitrary, operational definition of relative poverty.) This is a low rate by international standards,...