Canada's income gap widens, report says

[laundry_queen]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/07/13/income-gap-canada-conference-board.html

The richest Canadians increased their share of total national income while the poor and those with middle incomes saw their portions shrink, according to the board's analysis, entitled "How Canada Performs."

Incomes of the poor increased marginally in the period, it said, but the gap between rich and poor widened.

The average income of the poorest Canadians rose from $12,400 in 1976 to $14,500 in 2009.

However, the gap between the real average income of the richest 20 per cent of Canadians and the poorest 20 per cent widened from $92,300 in 1976 to $117,500 in 2009.

Who here is shocked?! :sarcasm: Median income hasn't gone up that much either. 5.5%. I'm guessing that housing and food costs relative to income have gone up quite a bit. I was also reading today house prices in Canada is expected to start falling and be down 10% in the next couple of years. It's the only thing that CAN happen when income doesn't keep up with living expenses. Watch for that bubble to burst (Again) soon. It will be milder than what happened to our friends down south, but it will hurt just the same.

[The Analyst]

1. Really isn't surprising

Public Policy in Canada since the late 1980s has really been aping (but not going to the same comical extremes) as the rest of Anglo-America. Canada has some of the worse household debt in the developed world, so I expect things to be hard on Canadians in the upcoming decade.