This article summarizes findings from recent research papers in the Business and Labour Market Analysis Division of Statistics Canada, regarding low-paid work and economically vulnerable families. It begins by focusing on the evolution of wages in Canada between 1981 and 2004, and then turns to...

Conventional wisdom has it that U. S. society is both richer and more unequal than Canadian society, and that both have become more unequal in recent decades. It is true that earnings inequality increased in both countries from 1974 to 1985. However, in the 1985 to 1995 period, while generally...

This paper provides an overview of income inequality and low-income trends in Canada from an international perspective. It addresses a series of questions, including:- Is family income inequality rising in Canada after decades of stability?- Is Canada a low- or high-income inequality country?-...

The objectives of this paper are to determine the empirical relationships between economic performance, transfers and low income among Canadian families, and to explore whether these relationships have changed over time. Similar recent studies in the US find a weakening in the relationship...

This study investigates trends in family income inequality in the 1980s and 1990s, with particular attention paid to the recovery period of the 1990s.

This comparative study investigates the role of family background characteristics in postsecondary access in Canada and the United States. Given that postsecondary schooling is funded very differently in the two countries, family background may play substantively different roles. The findings...

This article summarizes findings from the research paper entitled: The Instability of Family Earnings and Family Income in Canada, 1986 to 1991 and 1996 to 2001. Despite its implications for family well-being, little attention has been paid to the analysis of earnings instability in the context...

Boosting women’s relative control of income and other economic resources has so many consequences that positively enhance both gender equality and development that female economic empowerment may be close to being a “magic potion.†[Paper presented at the 100th Annual Meeting of...

We consider the collective model of labor supply with marketable domestic production (Chiappori, 1997). We first show that, if domestic production is mistakenly ignored by the economist, welfare analyses will be probably distorted. Precisely, the identification of "collective" indirect utilities...