IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/237.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income Inequality as a Canadian Cohort Ages: An Analysis of the Later Life Course

Author

Listed:
  • Steven Prus

Abstract

Survey of Consumer Finances cross-sectional data from 1973 to 1996 are used in this article to examine Canadian trends in income inequality over the middle and later stages of the life course of a synthetic cohort born between 1922 and 1926. Using Gini coefficients, the findings show that income inequality decreases within a cohort as it grows old; that is, the Canadian retirement income system levels the distribution of income in later life. The observed decrease in inequality corresponds with a decrease in income from earnings and an increase in dependency on state benefits. The progressive nature of public pension programs in Canada increases the relative income share and the average income of the poorest seniors. Moreover, cross-national comparisons of income inequality show that Canada exhibits a more equal distribution of income in old age compared to countries with similar old-age welfare systems, such as the United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven Prus, 2000. "Income Inequality as a Canadian Cohort Ages: An Analysis of the Later Life Course," LIS Working papers 237, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:237
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/237.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael D. Hurd & John B. Shoven, 1985. "Inflation Vulnerability, Income, and Wealth of the Elderly, 1969- 1979," NBER Chapters, in: Horizontal Equity, Uncertainty, and Economic Well-Being, pages 125-178, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Mustard, Cameron A. & Derksen, Shelley & Berthelot, Jean-marie & Wolfson, Michael & Roos, Leslie L., 1997. "Age-specific education and income gradients in morbidity and mortality in a Canadian province," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 383-397, August.
    3. Browning, Martin & Deaton, Angus & Irish, Margaret, 1985. "A Profitable Approach to Labor Supply and Commodity Demands over the Life-Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(3), pages 503-543, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hanewald, Katja & Jia, Ruo & Liu, Zining, 2021. "Why is inequality higher among the old? Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    2. Aboozar Hadavand, 2017. "Anatomy of Income Inequality in the United States: 1979-2013," LIS Working papers 686, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    3. Thomas L. Hungerford, 2020. "The Course of Income Inequality as a Cohort Ages into Old-Age," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(1), pages 71-90, March.
    4. Xiaobo Xu & Jiali Fang & Martin Young & Liping Zou, 2024. "The impact of post‐retirement financial market participation on retirement income sufficiency in Australia," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 64(1), pages 903-939, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Steven G. Prus, 1999. "Income Inequality as a Canadian Cohort Ages: An Analysis of the Later Life Course," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 10, McMaster University.
    2. Rodrigo M. S. Moita & Claudio Paiva, 2013. "Political Price Cycles in Regulated Industries: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 94-121, February.
    3. Muhammad Ali Chaudhary & Eatzaz Ahmad & Abid A. Burki & Mushtaq A. Khan, 1999. "Industrial Sector Input Demand Responsiveness and Policy Interventions," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 38(4), pages 1083-1100.
    4. Tatiane Menezes & R. Silveira-Neto & Carlos Azzoni, 2012. "Demography and evolution of regional inequality," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 49(3), pages 643-655, December.
    5. Esther Fernández & Rafaela Pérez Sánchez & Jesús Ruiz, 2003. "Environmental fiscal policies might be ineffective to control pollution," Economic Working Papers at Centro de Estudios Andaluces E2003/48, Centro de Estudios Andaluces.
    6. Kuroda, Sachiko & Yamamoto, Isamu, 2008. "Estimating Frisch labor supply elasticity in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 566-585, December.
    7. Yannis M. Ioannides & Vassilis A. Hajivassiliou, 2007. "Unemployment and liquidity constraints," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 479-510.
    8. Verbeek, M.J.C.M. & Nijman, T.E., 1990. "Can cohort data be treated as genuine panel data?," Other publications TiSEM 17fd5894-9eef-426e-b402-0, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Richard Blundell & Luigi Pistaferri & Itay Saporta-Eksten, 2016. "Consumption Inequality and Family Labor Supply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(2), pages 387-435, February.
    10. Rosen, Sherwin, 1985. "Implicit Contracts: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 23(3), pages 1144-1175, September.
    11. Kevin X.D. Huang & Zheng Liu, 2005. "Temptation and Self-Control: Some Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey," 2005 Meeting Papers 770, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Ligon, Ethan, 2016. "All \lambda-separable Frisch demands and corresponding utility functions," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt1w13q2f1, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    13. Ligon, Ethan, 2016. "Some $\lambda$-separable Frisch demands with utility functions," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt6p05c81z, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    14. Sule Alan & Orazio Attanasio & Martin Browning, 2009. "Estimating Euler equations with noisy data: two exact GMM estimators," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 309-324, March.
    15. Magdalena Smyk & Joanna Tyrowicz & Barbara Liberda, 2014. "Age-productivity patterns in talent occupations for men and women: a decomposition," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(3), pages 401-414, September.
    16. Diane J. Macunovich, 1999. "The fortunes of one's birth: Relative cohort size and the youth labor market in the United States," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 12(2), pages 215-272.
    17. Orazio P. Attanasio & Laura Blow & Robert Hamilton & Andrew Leicester, 2009. "Booms and Busts: Consumption, House Prices and Expectations," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 76(301), pages 20-50, February.
    18. Attanasio, Orazio & Low, Hamish & Sánchez-Marcos, Virginia & Levell, Peter, 2015. "Aggregating Elasticities: Intensive and Extensive Margins of Female Labour Supply," CEPR Discussion Papers 10732, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Gary V. Engelhardt & Anil Kumar, 2007. "Employer Matching and 401(k) Saving: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study," NBER Chapters, in: Public Policy and Retirement, Trans-Atlantic Public Economics Seminar (TAPES), pages 1920-1943, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Mayuri Chaturvedi, 2022. "Schooling Down to Marry Up: Marriage Norms and Educational Investments," Working Papers 202216, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:237. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.