Tag Archives: Harper economics

Just as Conservatives gathered to elect a new leader, Statistics Canada released income data for 2015. These allow us to look at trends under the full term of the Harper Government from 2006 to 2015. Average after tax income of economic families rose over this period – from $68,200 to $76,900 in inflation-adjusted dollars. But the gains were very unfairly distributed. The after tax income share of the top 10% of families and persons rose from 27.2% to 27.7% and that of the next 10% rose from...

Allan Moscovitch and I have co-authored a blog post that looks at the history of child benefits in Canada. Points made in the blog post include the following: -Child benefits can reduce both poverty and homelessness. -When child benefits began in Canada after World War II, one major motivating factor for the federal government was to avoid recession. Another was to fend off social unrest (i.e. Canada’s growing labour movement and the growing popularity of the CCF). The full blog post can be...