Have Middle-class Earnings Risen In Canada? A Statistical Inference Approach

Charles M. Beach
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Charles M. Beach: Queen's University

No 1393, Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University

Abstract: This paper extends the statistical inference approach developed in Beach (2016) to look at income changes over different regions of an income distribution. Specifically, it looks at relative-mean earnings (RME) ratios and mean earnings levels for lower earners, middle-class (MC) workers and higher earners in Canada since 1970. Formulas are developed for (asymptotic) standard errors of these distributional statistics. The most consistent pattern since 1980 has been the marked decline in RME for MC workers, which has been highly statistically significant. Since 2005, however, real earnings levels have increased significantly and have been broadly shared across these earnings groups.

Keywords: Income equality; Canadian earnings; Statistical inference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 C46 J20 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 80 pages
Date: 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qed:wpaper:1393

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