Who are the fat cats in Canada?
With the prime protest season fast approaching and the Occupy Anything movement threatening to again burst forth, a group of University of B.C. researchers has taken an extensive look at the issue it successfully raised last year - the widening gap between the rich and the rest of us - and put together a fascinating portrait of just who the one-per-centers are in this country.
The five authors analyzed Statistics Canada data and details gathered from the long-form census, a source that has now been killed by the Conservative government. Some of the information in the paper they produced, Canadian Inequality: Recent Development and Policy Options, first appeared in December in a series published in The Vancouver Sun.
What they found was that while the Occupy movement scored a direct hit with its spotlight on income disparity - the top one per cent is getting a larger share of the wealth we produce - its group portrait turns up a number of surprises.
The first is that the primary target of the Occupiers, the financial sector, produces only about 10 per cent of the upper crust.
"There are just not enough investment bankers and high-flying stock brokers to fill the ranks of the 275,000 individuals" in the top one per cent of the adult population, the authors wrote.
Based on the 2006 census, to be part of this exclusive group in Canada, you would have to have earned at least $230,000 annually. The median income of the top tier group was a little over $450,000, compared to the roughly $37,000 earned by all individuals that year.
As a group, the one-per-centers earned about 14 per cent of the income in Canada, almost double the eight per cent that group earned in the late 1970s. Bankers don't even make up the largest portion of highest earners. There were more managers (19.1 per cent) and senior managers and CEOs (14.1 per cent). Health professionals made up the next largest group at 11.1 per cent.
People who work in the oil and gas industry were also well represented, at 4.6 per cent, as were professional, scientific and technical workers at 15.8 per cent.
Some of the common characteristics of the group are not that surprising. They are well educated; almost six in 10 had at least a bachelor's degree compared to one in five in the general population.
They are hard working, with just over half reporting that they put in at least 50 hours a week and the one-per-centers are prominently a boys' club - 83 per cent are men.
Not surprisingly, they are also older than the general population. People under 35 are under-represented, no doubt primarily because they are just getting started in their careers.
More disturbing, how-ever, is the way age differences show up in the analysis of why the income gap is growing in Canada.
In a trend that started in the 1980s and early 1990s during severe recessions, young workers fell behind more experienced workers and never caught up. Looking ahead, the authors conclude that "younger workers, especially those with limited education, face a world with worse earnings prospects than their father's generation."
Why the change? Among the reasons the authors cite are technology that has increased the premium for highly skilled jobs and made relatively unskilled labour less in demand, the ability to export work and the decline of unions.
The other disturbing trend documented in the report is the increasing gap as measured by disposable income, as opposed to pre-tax income. Taxes and transfers to people with lower incomes tended to offset a growing inequality in pre-tax income during the 1980s, but since then, tax cuts and other policy changes have reduced the levelling effect of such measures.
The authors discuss a number of possible measures for closing the income gap a little bit without endorsing any, including higher minimum wages, raising the top marginal income tax rate, raising the age for compulsory school attendance and encouraging collective bargaining.
They end with an argument that makes sense to me. If you want the public to support economic growth, the majority will have to believe they will be getting a fair share of the benefits.
Original Article
Source: vancouver sun
Author: Craig McInnes
With the prime protest season fast approaching and the Occupy Anything movement threatening to again burst forth, a group of University of B.C. researchers has taken an extensive look at the issue it successfully raised last year - the widening gap between the rich and the rest of us - and put together a fascinating portrait of just who the one-per-centers are in this country.
The five authors analyzed Statistics Canada data and details gathered from the long-form census, a source that has now been killed by the Conservative government. Some of the information in the paper they produced, Canadian Inequality: Recent Development and Policy Options, first appeared in December in a series published in The Vancouver Sun.
What they found was that while the Occupy movement scored a direct hit with its spotlight on income disparity - the top one per cent is getting a larger share of the wealth we produce - its group portrait turns up a number of surprises.
The first is that the primary target of the Occupiers, the financial sector, produces only about 10 per cent of the upper crust.
"There are just not enough investment bankers and high-flying stock brokers to fill the ranks of the 275,000 individuals" in the top one per cent of the adult population, the authors wrote.
Based on the 2006 census, to be part of this exclusive group in Canada, you would have to have earned at least $230,000 annually. The median income of the top tier group was a little over $450,000, compared to the roughly $37,000 earned by all individuals that year.
As a group, the one-per-centers earned about 14 per cent of the income in Canada, almost double the eight per cent that group earned in the late 1970s. Bankers don't even make up the largest portion of highest earners. There were more managers (19.1 per cent) and senior managers and CEOs (14.1 per cent). Health professionals made up the next largest group at 11.1 per cent.
People who work in the oil and gas industry were also well represented, at 4.6 per cent, as were professional, scientific and technical workers at 15.8 per cent.
Some of the common characteristics of the group are not that surprising. They are well educated; almost six in 10 had at least a bachelor's degree compared to one in five in the general population.
They are hard working, with just over half reporting that they put in at least 50 hours a week and the one-per-centers are prominently a boys' club - 83 per cent are men.
Not surprisingly, they are also older than the general population. People under 35 are under-represented, no doubt primarily because they are just getting started in their careers.
More disturbing, how-ever, is the way age differences show up in the analysis of why the income gap is growing in Canada.
In a trend that started in the 1980s and early 1990s during severe recessions, young workers fell behind more experienced workers and never caught up. Looking ahead, the authors conclude that "younger workers, especially those with limited education, face a world with worse earnings prospects than their father's generation."
Why the change? Among the reasons the authors cite are technology that has increased the premium for highly skilled jobs and made relatively unskilled labour less in demand, the ability to export work and the decline of unions.
The other disturbing trend documented in the report is the increasing gap as measured by disposable income, as opposed to pre-tax income. Taxes and transfers to people with lower incomes tended to offset a growing inequality in pre-tax income during the 1980s, but since then, tax cuts and other policy changes have reduced the levelling effect of such measures.
The authors discuss a number of possible measures for closing the income gap a little bit without endorsing any, including higher minimum wages, raising the top marginal income tax rate, raising the age for compulsory school attendance and encouraging collective bargaining.
They end with an argument that makes sense to me. If you want the public to support economic growth, the majority will have to believe they will be getting a fair share of the benefits.
Original Article
Source: vancouver sun
Author: Craig McInnes
No comments:
Post a Comment