Income instability of lone parents, singles and two-parent families in Canada, 1984 to 2004 : Instabilité du revenu des parents seuls, des célibataires et des familles biparentales au Canada, 1984 à 2004

On the one hand, in all age groups, the instability of the after-tax income in the bottom tertile is lower than the instability of the total income although the reduction is 6% at most, and in some age groups it is close to zero. [...] For instance, families in the bottom tertile of the family income distribution measured during the four-year period prior to the observation period display much more unstable employment income than their counterparts in the top tertile although the stabilizing role of wives’ employment seems to be more pronounced among the former. [...] One of the salient aspects of our findings is that the earnings instability of lone mothers in the bottom tertile is, in some cases, approximately double the earnings instability of the two-parent families (Figure 2). [...] It is clear that earnings instability is a much bigger issue for the lone parents in the bottom tertile of the earnings distribution than for the two-parent families in the bottom tertile. [...] In the aggregate, the earnings instability of unattached men has declined over the past two decades (although the magnitude of the decline is modest) the earnings instability of unattached women aged 30+ has risen (Table 1).