Despite popular belief that inequality is rising, income inequality in Canada has improved in recent years and fell sharply during the pandemic. Wealth inequality has declined dramatically over the past two decades.
But inequality still exists in Canada—women, racialized groups, new Canadians, and Indigenous people face tougher economic circumstances.
The end of pandemic supports, high inflation, and high interest rates will put pressure on inequality. Lower-income households will suffer more under these circumstances.
Access to health, education, and daycare contribute to reducing inequality and have helped Canada be a leader in intergenerational mobility. Inheritance taxes could improve our outcomes further.
A well-targeted, means-tested minimum income, distributed federally, could help efficiently alleviate income inequality among disparate groups.
Mary Grande –
Not impressed with the study or the findings. Nothing that we do not know, no reference to other countries other than Scandinavia and mild mention of Europe, but, we aren’t anywhere near Scandinavia or Europe. Our culture is neither of those. Culture longevity has an impact on everything in a society including its social programs. All the findings are an echo chamber of what the current federal government propagandizes.
CBoC –
Thank you, always appreciate the feedback. Please look for our upcoming publication entitled How Canada Performs (link below). This research will benchmark Canada’s performance on income inequality (and many other important metrics that help define a high quality of life) to a list of comparator countries including Scandinavian and other European countries. The research findings for this report are based on data provided by Statistics Canada and other independent sources, such as the OECD. We intended it to be an objective assessment of how income dispersion changed over recent years.
https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/overview/