An interesting study into income mobility in Canada
Over the span of a decade, 83% of Canada’s lowest income earners moved up the income ladder, according to a Fraser Institute report released Tuesday.
“Lower-income Canadians are not permanently stuck with a low income — that’s a myth,” Mr. Lammam said. “Where you are today is not where you’re going to be five, 10 or 20 years down the road.”
The 60-page report is based on Statistics Canada income data for more than one million Canadians, today aged 39 through 64, whose tax returns were linked with Social Insurance Numbers to track their earnings over the course of five, 10 and 19 years. And the findings, Mr. Lammam said, are remarkable: In the 19-year period between 1990 and 2009, one in five Canadians in the lowest of five income groups eventually moved up to the highest-income camp, and nine out of 10 people in the lowest-income group rose out of the bottom.
“The results are extremely encouraging, especially when we’re bombarded with myths of stagnating Canadian incomes or that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer,” he said, adding that more than a third of top earners in 1990 slipped to a lower income category by 2009. “This study blows those myths out of the water.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/11...study-reveals/
Cowperson