Immigration, low income and income inequality in Canada : Immigration, faible revenu et inégalité des revenus au Canada : Quoi de neuf durant les années 2000?

Third, while rising immigrant low-income rates accounted for virtually all of the increase in the national low-income rate over the 1980s and 1990s, immigrants accounted for little of the decline in the national low-income rate during the 2000s. [...] Unlike the 1990s, when rising immigrant population shares and low-income rates accounted for most of the increase in low-income rates in Canada, the decrease in the rates during the 2000s was driven primarily by falling rates among the Canadian-born. [...] The adult-equivalent-adjusted family income is calculated on a constant dollar basis (adjusted to the 2010 value of the Consumer Prince Index) in each of the years covered by the study (1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010), and the average of these values is used as the low-income threshold in all years. [...] Using the formula below, the overall change between the beginning and ending year (e.g., 2000 and 2010) in the low-income rate in the region can be decomposed into three terms: the overall change associated with changes in composition of recent immigrants (e.g., changes in the proportion with bachelor’s degrees or entering under the PNP); the overall change associated with changes in the likelihoo [...] Such a program effect might be related to differences in factors such as the share of immigrants who enter with a job in place, the link between the occupational skills of the entering immigrants and those in demand in the local economy, and the labour market network to which an immigrant has access after entering the country.