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A tale of two Canadas: Where you grew up affects your income in adulthood
- mangofoobar 9y agoIn other news... water is wet
- TimPC 9y agoThe charts in the article are pretty interesting. In some provinces the income mobility of the bottom fifth is better than some of the middle three groups (data which is hidden in the article but can be inferred). The article mentions immigration as a potential cause of this, but it would be interesting to figure out if there are other reasons why there isn't a general trend line here.
- TimPC 9y agoThey also pick different comparison groups for the projected income -- likely to give the appearance of linearity where there is some evidence the predictions aren't actually linear over the quintiles.
- elevensies 9y agoAre you referring to the fact that if the region is dark green (more than 20%) for moving into the top quintile from the bottom, it necessitates that another quintile has a rate less than 20%? The income quintile boundaries are set nationally, but the movements are divided locally, there is no such requirement for balancing in a single area. In theory, a single location could have 100% of people moving into the national top quintile. edit: I'm referring to the chart called Rags-to-riches income mobility
- microcolonel 9y agoThis is a good presentation, finally something digestible I can point people to when I tell them that there is only about a 1/3 chance of a generation remaining in their income quintile on either end of the spectrum.
- Kronopath 9y agoIt's nice to see the Globe and Mail jumping on the Explorable Explanations train.
- jfim 9y agoIndeed, I was pleasantly surprised to see this high quality reporting from the Globe and Mail.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lfnoise 9y agopeople who use red and green on charts can go to hell.
- mwambua 9y agoWhile I don't approve with the way you expressed it... I agree that people could be a little more considerate of colorblind readers. I almost immediately give up once I see a scatter plot with red and green. It tends to get worse the smaller the dots are.
- eigenvector 9y agoThe guy who made the charts is an acquaintance of mine and I've passed along your feedback. He wasn't aware of the issue and will keep it in mind for future work.
- CountSessine 9y agoJust wondering - can you get a display filter for your OS or browser to do a colour substitution? Like make everything that's red into blue? Does that exists?
- jt2190 9y agoI know that iOS has it built in. I'll bet that macOS does as well.
- jfim 9y agoOne chart towards the end mentions that in most cases, children earn more than their parents; it would be interesting to compare the affordability of housing across generations. It seems that even as if children earn more (in inflation-adjusted dollars), their dollars are worth less for housing due to housing prices increasing faster than inflation.
- microcolonel 9y agoIn spite of rising downtown housing costs, home ownership rates are outrageously high in Canada, probably even higher than the theoretical optimum.
- jfim 9y agoOut of curiosity, what makes it outrageously high? It seems to be around 67% [1], while our neighbors to the South have somewhat similar numbers (between 63 and 68% in the last decade) [2]. What would be the theoretical optimum? [1] http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a05?lang=eng&id=2030027 http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a05?lang=eng&id=2030027 look for "Owned dwelling" [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_States#Historical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_S...
- refurb 9y agoConsidering the meteoric rise of housing prices in Canada, coupled with the increase in the percentage who own a home, that spells disaster if housing takes a downturn which appears to be happening in Vancouver and now Toronto. Your link to US data shows just how far home ownership fell during the financial crisis. Canada is close to the same peak as the US.
- problems 9y agoToronto and Vancouver have been known to be particularly bad markets though - using them as examples for all of Canada is probably a mistake.
- btilly 9y agoIt is too bad that the graph doesn't include the USA. That would clearly show how much better social mobility is in Canada than the USA. Which is an important but under-appreciated fact.
- 13of40 9y agoI'd be interested to see that, and another axis for race. I'd imagine the opportunity for social mobility for most Canadian First Nations people, for example, is pretty grim.
- btilly 9y agoI would love to see that as well, if you can track down the data. And I expect that your theory is right. :-(
- evgen 9y agoProbably so, but I would be willing to bet that it is better than the social mobility of Native Americans.
- jeromegv 9y agoWhat is it with this idea that things are always better in Canada? Without any data to back it up? Considering Canada has been blamed at the UN for their treatment of First Nations, I wouldn't race to this conclusion. Considering how terrible it is in Canada, it would be good to question what can be done in Canada instead of trying to diminish the problem by "betting" that at least we are better than Americans ??!
- hackermailman 9y agoI live in a heavily native populated area in Canada, the anecdotes I hear from them is it is far better to be an American Native than a Canadian one because of the Indian Act which doesn't grant them title to their lands, so they legally can't own a house on a reserve and use it for collateral to obtain loans or pass it to another generation as a way of transferring wealth. Americans also have much more freedom to do what they want on their own land such as building casinos or whatever they want, here it requires navigating the ancient Indian Act.
- kat 9y agoIt shows exactly how dependent we are on resourced-based economies. The west coast is all red, forestry and fishing crashed on the west coast, and the prairies are all green, oil boom from the last few decades. I'm a little surprised that immigration between provinces did not even out incomes between the two resource boom/bust cycles.
- mthoms 9y agoYou raise a good point - I wonder where are people who changed province are shown on the map? That is, are they indicated by their current province or that of their upbringing (ie. their parents province)?
- mabbo 9y agoA lot of that map is explained by oil: https://www.spec2000.net/text100fp/cdnoilmap.jpg https://www.spec2000.net/text100fp/cdnoilmap.jpg In the last couple decades, it's become affordable to mine tarsands. The oil boom has meant people in those places make a lot more money. Naturally, they are making more money than their parents did. The other green area is Toronto. If you're 40-50 in Toronto today, you probably bought a house in your late 20s or early 30s, which has now quadrupled on value. All of that to say, many of the places where mobility is rising may be short lived. In reality, we may be an entire country of low mobility, except for the few lucky areas.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Tortoise 9y agoThis makes no sense. Every large city is dark green (the best.) Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City. Even Montreal is light green. Most smaller cities—like Halifax, Winnipeg, Saskatoon—are also dark green.
- DKnoll 9y agoA city is defined as 100,000 population or greater in Canada, none of the cities you mentioned are small given that context. A good example of a small Canadian city is Thunder Bay. I'd give you more... but I'm from the GTA. ;)
- mabbo 9y agoYou're right, there probably are other factors in play here. But there is almost certainly not one reason to explain everything. Oil looks quite likely to be a major reason, but we should find out what the other reasons are.
- petraeus 9y agoIf by a lot you mean 1 province (alberta) out of the top 10 urban centres in Canada ... oh hell i'll just say it, no alberta is not the engine of the Canadian economy, the golden horseshoe is. Oil prices are at rock bottom and Canada is still doing fine.
- joshlemer 9y agoSeeing the map of Vancouver is interesting, West Vancouver ranks poorly, despite being one of (if not the) richest area in the country.
- bparsons 9y agoIncomes there are extremely high. Not a lot of room for growth at the moment.
- pcthrowaway 9y agoThat map showing the different areas of Vancouver describes the likelihood of children to exceed their parents income. Since that's a very wealthy area, the target is higher there.
- dade_ 9y agoInteresting, the more (socially) right wing your neighbourhood is, the better the economic mobility. What gets lost in the statistics is how many people ran away screaming from these places and now live all over the world making far more money than their parents or neighbours dreamed of. It is interesting to run into people during Christmas and find out where they live and what they do now.
- goodroot 9y agoNice comment. I just wanted to clarify that Canadian right-wing is much, much different than what's considered right in the US.
- Tiktaalik 9y agoHow on earth was this your takeaway from the article? The impact of social political views wasn't mentioned once, and Dr. Corak clearly explains the actual reasons. Even a glance at the map disproves your point. BC outside of Vancouver and Victoria is relatively socially conservative, but it's a sea of red due to the lack of labour demand in those rural areas.
- Seanny123 9y agoNot to mention the Sudbury and Waterloo area which is super left-wing and unionist. I mean, anecdotal, but I feel like it's okay to counter an anecdote with an anecdote in this case? Further analysis would require access to the data being shown here and cross referencing it with the outcome of past elections.
- randomdata 9y ago> How on earth was this your takeaway from the article? Perhaps he looked at a map[1]? I have to admit, while there are some clear deviations, as I flip between the two images the areas with the highest mobility do seem to follow the Conservative-leaning areas. It is definitely not a perfect 1:1 mapping, but interesting nevertheless. What really stands out to me though is that the areas with arable land[2] (and oil) generally have the most mobility. Makes me wonder if the food and energy commodities boom from a few years back has skewed the numbers? [1] http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2015/10/na1020-election_map_12001.jpg?quality=75&strip=all http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2015/10/na1020-election... [2] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/16-002-x/2015002/article/14133/map/map1-eng.jpg http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/16-002-x/2015002/article/14133/...
- SirLJ 9y agoAlso don't forget the massive immigration and the large percentage of Canadians born outside Canada - that is one hell of a mobility :-)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- notadoc 9y ago> Where you grew up affects your income in adulthood That certainly extends beyond Canada
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- goodJobWalrus 9y agoAt first, I was surprised about southern BC, but then it could be that it's so awesome there that people don't want to move.
- frabbit 9y agoJust having dragged the scroller for the embedded sample for Halifax, N.S. a simple, idle question occurs to me: I presume that this is all not just regression to the mean? Is there something deeper than that demonstrated here?
- ClashTheBunny 9y agoThis is actually more likely the "law of small numbers". The lower population areas have high variation, because there is lower statistical significance to their resulting "mobility" I would like to see what it is like for a small sliding scale. Give me the same data with the ability to slide it over a 10 year or 10 month period. Do the smaller population areas flip back and forth between "mobile" and "immobile"?
- 52-6F-62 9y agoDammit, Norfolk County = low mobility. Coming from one of those rare spots surrounded by deep green of the rather populous southern Ontario, it's a lack of education and resources and connectivity. Three of the schools I went to when I was young have been closed permanently and razed. There remains one because I switched high schools midway through by claiming I couldn't receive all of the courses I needed at my local school (which was true). When I was in the second grade the school wanted to advance me by five years after comprehension testing. My parents declined because they were worried I'd become unsocialized and no other push was made. At that point the school essentially pushed me to the side and had me make up my own work to do outside of standardized testing and major projects. By high school severe apathy and boredom had set in. To get anything out of it I spent most of my time in the library or on the newly introduced internet. This is the late mid-late 90's. Key points: * no public transportation * no private transportation connecting to cities * low number of open jobs outside minimum wage for young people * factories shuttered from the late 90s to early 2000s due to shifting tech and industry and slow adoption in this area * low funding for schools, frequent closures * public schools that remain tend to have lower resources rather than concentrated resources I live in Toronto, now -- there have been times where I had to white knuckle my way through to get by here, yet. I'm working on it. That said, Canada (even my home county) is a great place to live and grow up, and its getting better.
- Cryptoholic 9y agoDoes anyone have any details on why coastal BC is so poor on mobility rankings? It was the one surprise of the article for me.
- kat 9y agoI think its because coastal BC is very resource heavy. It use to be fishing and logging (think bumper stickers with the slogan timber dollars feed my family). Both of those industries pay well but have been in decline for the last few decades.
- Companion 9y agoAs well as how well your parents do. I know a ton of people that averaged their way though school and a career, but were given help early enough from parents that even in mediocrity they are doing magnitudes better than people who grew up poor and worked hard.
- Horizon_Blue 9y agoVery interesting - the situation they describe for those born in Southwestern Ontario is exactly what happened to me. I was born there, went to a local university, then moved to Toronto and now make more then my parents do. But many people I went to high school with that didn't get post-secondary education remain there, and don't make significantly more then their parents, and sometimes significantly less.