Human Resources committee  I'll address this last slide very quickly. We knew we would run out of time, so I've listed a few topics that we can discuss with the committee if they wish. On why low-income rates are declining among lone parents, we did a study on that, so I'd be happy to talk about it. We'v

Human Resources committee  Do you want me to give you a two-sentence summary of each of these?

Human Resources committee  I'll make this quick. Why are low-income rates declining among lone parents? We asked that question, and after so many years we noticed that employment earnings were rising and employment rates were rising among lone parents. Why was that? Basically we found two things. One, the

Human Resources committee  As Sylvie pointed out, we observed—lots of people, lots of researchers have observed—that outcomes for recent immigrants, and immigrants in general, have been deteriorating since the early 1980s. That's in spite of the fact, as I think you probably all know, that the educational

Human Resources committee  The work we did was on lone female parents, single moms.

Human Resources committee  Yes. We didn't actually look at males. We couldn't, because the sample wasn't large enough in the particular study. So those findings I talked about were really for lone mothers.

Human Resources committee  That's a good question. The measure everyone uses, and the one that I and other people have talked about, is a relative measure, which means it's relative to the median. So a country like the United States, which has a very high median income, is going to have a very high low-i

Human Resources committee  So the United States looks a lot better in an absolute measure--a purchasing power measure--than it does in this relative measure, because it's wealthier. In the absolute measure, that is, if you're talking about purchasing power, Canada comes out looking pretty good relative t

Human Resources committee  Regarding earnings, when I think about low income, I think of three components or three background areas. One is what is going on in the labour market. Second is what the state is doing to the tax transfer system. Third is demographic change, which also can affect low income. Of

Human Resources committee  Perhaps I could add to that. From an analytical point of view in trying to figure out what's happening, this is not from what should be our official poverty line because we're not going to choose that. As Sylvie has said, the market basket measure, because it's more of a cost-

Human Resources committee  I think we've become so accustomed to talking about the low-income rate that we just sort of forget about the low-income gap and the depth. The data is there and is actually in publications coming out of Stats Canada, so it would be very easy to put that together for you.

Human Resources committee  It isn't people who are below the poverty line; it's people who are at the tenth percentile in income distribution. That is, 10% of the population are below them and 90% are above them, in terms of their income. If you look at that particular group.... This is from a research pa

Human Resources committee  According to that particular study. Now, I should really stress that there are all sorts of difficulties in doing this. Deriving those purchasing power parity numbers is extremely difficult, so I would take this as a rough-and-ready guide. The main point is that the relative l

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much, Sylvie. We're now at the slide titled “Low-income dynamics”. Sylvie has been talking about the rate through time and across provinces. I want to talk somewhat about movement of people into low income, how long they stay in low income, and the exit, which we

Human Resources committee  There are two parts to the answer. For the years I show in this calculation—where we calculate the low-income rate based on earnings first, and then we add taxes and transfers—I've selected business cycle peaks, because we wanted the long-term trend. We do have these numbers for