Author: MilesCorak

I am a professor of economics and public policy with The Graduate Center, City University of New York, working on child rights, poverty, immigration, social mobility, unemployment, and social policy.

Understanding what poverty means and how it is measured are the first steps toward a poverty reduction strategy

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Poverty rates in Canada LICO and LIM
Two most commonly used Statistics Canada poverty rates show radically different patterns.

The two most commonly used poverty rates produced by Statistics Canada tell very different stories. The patterns are curious, and confusing. The two statistics—the poverty rate according to the Low Income Cut-off and that according to the Low Income Measure—track each other rather closely up to the early 1990s, then diverge quite markedly as the Low Income Cut-off falls steadily to an unprecedented low, while the Low Income Measure drifts upward. Which statistic should we believe?

The cyclical patterns also differ, with the Low Income Measure registering higher poverty during recessions only before the 1990s, and in a way that is more muted and lagging the movement in the Low Income Cut-off. It also signals a rise in poverty only well after the onset of the 1990/92 recession, and both measures show no upturn in poverty during the Great Recession, which began in 2008 and led to a significant fall in employment.

For something that is central to so many policy debates, the Canadian “poverty” rate is notoriously confusing, and it is easy to imagine that public policy may be misled. The first step in devising a poverty reduction strategy is understanding what these numbers mean, and whether they are useful. Is poverty at unprecedented lows, or has it been stuck at high levels for decades? Both views can’t be right, but they can both be wrong.

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Three enhancements to Employment Insurance to reduce income inequality, promote income security, and support families

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Social policy in Canada faces three challenges having to do with income inequality, income insecurity, and the imbalance between work and family life. My presentation at the Queen’s University conference, “Social Canada Revisited,” begins by outlining three facts that illustrate these challenges:

  1. The share of total market income going to bottom-income Canadians has fallen
  2. Workers with steady employment suffer significant and long-lasting income losses after a layoff
  3. Families have changed to help cushion and support middle incomes, but the family-work balance is titled

I suggest that there are precedents in the existing Employment Insurance program that can be enhanced and built upon to more fully offer Canadians the social insurance they need and want, and put forward three enhancements that will move social policy in this direction.

  1. Enhance Working While on Claim and integrate it seamlessly with the Working Income Tax Benefit to offer steady and increased income support to lower-income Canadians in a way that mimics some versions of a Basic Income
  2. Introduce wage insurance that would top up weekly earnings for workers with a steady employment history who have suffered a permanent layoff
  3. Expand so-called “Special Benefits” by creating individual accounts over which individuals have complete sovereignty

Download a copy of my presentation for the details.

Inequality, life chances, and public policy

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Lecture series Inequality and Miles Corak European Investment Bank Luxembourg

We should care about inequality because it has the potential to shape opportunities for the next generation. My presentation at the European Investment Bank offers a framework for thinking about this relationship, and for understanding why the adult outcomes of children are more closely tied to their family background—with the poor raising the next generation of poor adults, and the rich more likely to see their children to be rich in adulthood—in countries with greater inequality.

Differences in families, labour markets, and public policy all play a role in understanding why the United States and the United Kingdom have relatively less social mobility than many other countries.

Feel free to download the presentation, which will also soon be posted online by the University of Luxembourg.

Changing income inequality, some Canada – US differences

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One of the responsibilities of being President of the Canadian Economics Association is organizing the conference program; but one of the honours is giving the “Presidential Address” to the entire assembly of the next year’s conference. This year’s address is by Charles Beach of Queen’s University who spoke on “Changing income inequality: A distributional paradigm for Canada.”

This is a particularly special meeting to give the Presidential Address, as it is the association’s 50th anniversary with a record attendance of over 1,200.

Beach’s objective is to pull together a whole host of facts, and offer a framing that can drive a consistent narrative, and in this way to understand underlying drivers of inequality in Canada and guidance for policy. Beach also points out that there are significant differences between Canada and the United States.

There has been a decline in the share of income going to families in the middle over the last 30 years, and there has been a corresponding increase in the share going to the top 10%. Interestingly the share going to the bottom 20% has not changed so much, a big difference from the United States. Median family incomes have also been slightly increasing in Canada, another big difference between these two countries. The other big cross-country difference is that while top 1% shares have gone up in both countries, the rise is bigger in the United States.

It is also true that the returns to education have risen in both countries, but again more so in the United States. Several things could be driving this: immigration policy in the US is more focused on low skilled workers than in Canada where the focus is somewhat more on high skill immigrants; Canada has experienced a boom in the resource and housing sectors that disproportionately employ lower skilled workers, and unionization rates are higher; there was also a big inflow of highly educated women entering in the labour force in both countries, but more so in Canada. All these factors have had the tendency to blunt earnings growth at the top in Canada, and support it somewhat at the bottom, but perhaps done the opposite in the United States.

Typical workers have been benefiting less from overall output gains, but again the patterns differ between the two countries. Labour income as a proportion of GDP has hovered between 50 and 55% in Canada since 1960, but in the United States drifted from about that in the 1960s to below 45% by 2010.

Earnings inequality at the top has slowed progress in pay equity between men and women

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Nicole Fortin, a professor of economics with the University of British Columbia, addressed the 50th anniversary meeting of the Canadian Economics Association with a “state of the art” presentation on earnings inequality in top incomes and the gender pay gap, examining three questions:

  1. What are the consequences of under representation of women in top incomes to the overall pay gap?
  2. How is it contributing to the slowdown in the convergence of male and female wages?
  3. What could be done to change things?

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Applying Behavioural Economics to Canadian public policy

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Some decisions invite undesirable behaviour, even if unintentional. Others can encourage desirable behaviour, but they have to be thought through. Think about taking the escalator, or taking the stairs.

These actions are challenging because they have an immediate cost, but generate long-term benefits, and because human decision-making can be skewed to a present bias. Behavioural economics studies these challenges, and was the subject of a State of the Art Lecture given by Philip Oreopoulos of the University of Toronto at the 50th meeting of the Canadian Economics Association. Here is a summary of his talk.

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