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Changes in health status may affect not just the individuals who experience such changes, but also their family members. For example, if the main earner in a family loses his or her ability to generate income due to a health shock, it invariably affects the financial situation of the spouse and other dependents. In addition, spouses and working-age children may themselves increase or reduce their labour supply to make up for the lost income (“added worker effect”) or care for a sick family member (“caregiver effect”). Since consumption smoothing and self-insurance occur at the household level, the financial effects of health for other family members have important policy implications. To shed light on such effects, this study analyzes how one spouse’s cancer diagnosis affects the employment and earnings of the other spouse and (before-tax) total family income using administrative data from Canada.

This series provides detailed documentation on income developments, including survey design issues, data quality evaluation and exploratory research for the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics in 2007

This series provides detailed documentation on income developments, including survey design issues, data quality evaluation and exploratory research for the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID).

This series provides detailed documentation on income developments, including survey design issues, data quality evaluation and exploratory research for the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics in 2000.

Several recent papers have cited non-linearities in the relationship between incomes of parents and their children as evidence of important intergenerational credit constraints. This paper argues that any pattern in the conditional expectation function can be justified by a properly constructed story with credit constraints. This raises questions about the validity of the approach. Quantile regressions provide an alternative test. Using data from Canadian tax files, this paper finds results contrary to the credit constraints hypothesis; the non-linearities in the regression function are driven by the low-ability (unconstrained) sons rather than high-ability (presumably constrained) sons.

This report explains the concept of income and provides definitions of the various sources of income and derived income variables. It also documents the various aspects of the census that can have an impact on census income estimates.

While there are many studies on differences in earnings between immigrants and the native-born or among immigrant groups, they ignore the distribution and concentration of income. These aspects are important for understanding the distribution of economic welfare and consumer behaviour among members and hence are policy relevant.

Using the 1991 Census data, the distribution and concentration of income have been examined among 15 broad birthplace groups for population aged 55 years and over. About 19% of males and 15% of females receive less than half the median income and obtain 5% and 3% of the aggregate income respectively. About 30% of males and 29% of females receive more than one and half times the median income and obtain 61% and59% of aggregate income respectively. About 51% of males and 56% of females who receive incomes between half and one and half times the median income are termed middle-class and their shares of aggregate income amount to 34 and 38% respectively.

Although, older immigrants aged 55 years and over, as a group, have roughly the same quartile distribution and concentration of income as their Canadian-born counterparts, the birthplace groups differ from each other. The groups coming from the developing regions, that is, the very groups that have lower average annual incomes, also have more inequitable distribution of income than the Canadian-born or their counterparts from the developed regions. Thus, the income distribution is more polarized in the populations from developing regions than in the populations from developed regions or in the Canadian-born population. On average, females receive 45% less income than males, and there is less polarization of income among them than among males regardless of the place of birth. A part of the explanation lies in the receipt of government transfers which tend to equalize rather than polarize incomes, and older women derive higher proportion of their income from government transfers than older men.

Documentation to accompany public-use microdata files. Contains a detailed description of the survey design, content and methods, as well as the record layout and the data dictionary.

Documentation to accompany public-use microdata files. Contains a detailed description of the survey design, content and methods, as well as the record layout and the data dictionary.

Changes in health status may affect not just the individuals who experience such changes, but also their family members. For example, if the main earner in a family loses his or her ability to generate income due to a health shock, it invariably affects the financial situation of the spouse and other dependents. In addition, spouses and working-age children may themselves increase or reduce their labour supply to make up for the lost income (“added worker effect”) or care for a sick family member (“caregiver effect”). Since consumption smoothing and self-insurance occur at the household level, the financial effects of health for other family members have important policy implications. To shed light on such effects, this study analyzes how one spouse’s cancer diagnosis affects the employment and earnings of the other spouse and (before-tax) total family income using administrative data from Canada.

Several recent papers have cited non-linearities in the relationship between incomes of parents and their children as evidence of important intergenerational credit constraints. This paper argues that any pattern in the conditional expectation function can be justified by a properly constructed story with credit constraints. This raises questions about the validity of the approach. Quantile regressions provide an alternative test. Using data from Canadian tax files, this paper finds results contrary to the credit constraints hypothesis; the non-linearities in the regression function are driven by the low-ability (unconstrained) sons rather than high-ability (presumably constrained) sons.

While there are many studies on differences in earnings between immigrants and the native-born or among immigrant groups, they ignore the distribution and concentration of income. These aspects are important for understanding the distribution of economic welfare and consumer behaviour among members and hence are policy relevant.

Using the 1991 Census data, the distribution and concentration of income have been examined among 15 broad birthplace groups for population aged 55 years and over. About 19% of males and 15% of females receive less than half the median income and obtain 5% and 3% of the aggregate income respectively. About 30% of males and 29% of females receive more than one and half times the median income and obtain 61% and59% of aggregate income respectively. About 51% of males and 56% of females who receive incomes between half and one and half times the median income are termed middle-class and their shares of aggregate income amount to 34 and 38% respectively.

Although, older immigrants aged 55 years and over, as a group, have roughly the same quartile distribution and concentration of income as their Canadian-born counterparts, the birthplace groups differ from each other. The groups coming from the developing regions, that is, the very groups that have lower average annual incomes, also have more inequitable distribution of income than the Canadian-born or their counterparts from the developed regions. Thus, the income distribution is more polarized in the populations from developing regions than in the populations from developed regions or in the Canadian-born population. On average, females receive 45% less income than males, and there is less polarization of income among them than among males regardless of the place of birth. A part of the explanation lies in the receipt of government transfers which tend to equalize rather than polarize incomes, and older women derive higher proportion of their income from government transfers than older men.

This series provides detailed documentation on income developments, including survey design issues, data quality evaluation and exploratory research for the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics in 2007

This series provides detailed documentation on income developments, including survey design issues, data quality evaluation and exploratory research for the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID).

This series provides detailed documentation on income developments, including survey design issues, data quality evaluation and exploratory research for the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics in 2000.

This report explains the concept of income and provides definitions of the various sources of income and derived income variables. It also documents the various aspects of the census that can have an impact on census income estimates.