Economic and Social Reports

Spotlight on data and research

Measuring the value of women’s contribution to the Canadian economy: New insights based on recent work

This Spotlight on Data and Research article summarizes recent Statistics Canada research that focuses on improving estimates of women’s contribution to the economy—through paid and unpaid work.

Recent Statistics Canada articles provided estimates of women’s contribution to paid and unpaid work, separately. This article looks at those estimates in combination. In 2018, women contributed 28.5% to gross domestic product (paid work). When including the value of unpaid work, this contribution rises to 35.8% (28.5% plus the 14.3% stemming from the value of unpaid work). In contrast, men contributed 47.5% to the total value of paid and unpaid work.  The remaining portion is income that cannot be assigned to a gender.

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Assessing the rise in broad-based inflationary pressure during 2021 and 2022

Consumer spending has been impacted by high inflation since price pressures began to build in early 2021. Using expenditure weights from the Consumer Price Index (CPI), this article reports on the share of the expenditure basket that falls into different inflationary ranges, first based on all measured products and services, and then separately for food products.

While consumer inflation eased substantially in late 2022 as gas prices fell, key sources of upward price pressure, including food and shelter, showed little signs of moderating. December 2022 marked the twenty-first consecutive month that the headline rate has been above three percent, and the tenth consecutive month above six percent. Overall consumer prices have risen by 11.4% during the past two years, while grocery prices have increased by 17.4%.

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Insights

Patenting activity of women-owned businesses in Canada

In today’s knowledge-based economy, innovative activity and intellectual property (IP) are of increasing importance. This article presents some of the first evidence on patenting by gender of business owner in Canada. Over the 2001-to-2019 period, men-owned businesses accounted for a larger share of patent applications than women- and equally-owned businesses, and the gender gap did not narrow over the period. A notable difference between the men- and women-owned businesses that patent was that men-owned businesses were 16.5 percentage points more likely to have conducted R&D, and conditional on conducting R&D, spent 70% more. This may explain why men-owned firms that patent have more applications per firm, and why men-owned businesses have a higher rate of having those applications granted.

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