Human Resources committee  If we look at unattached individuals, the low-income rates are very similar but they're much higher, as we've pointed out. For unattached women, the low-income rate is 29.6%; and for unattached men, it's 28.8%. So there's a small gap, but not too much difference between the two.

Human Resources committee  Maybe I'll take a shot at the first one. The overall low-income rate for women in 2006, the latest data we have, was 10.9%; and for men it was 10.1%. So in the aggregate there is still some difference between the two. I'd just like to reiterate what Shawn was saying earlier abo

Human Resources committee  I noticed earlier we have different numbers because we have different definitions. We think of recent immigrants as people in Canada for five years or less, and it's around 35%.

Human Resources committee  About 18% of recent immigrants are in what we refer to as chronic low income. That is, they're in low income for at least four of their first five years in Canada.

Human Resources committee  I'm going to turn it over to these guys on my left.

Human Resources committee  We would like to do that. Unfortunately--

Human Resources committee  We need, in order to do that, longitudinal data, which means we need to be able to track people for at least six years. We didn't have such data in Canada back in the seventies and eighties, so we cannot move those numbers back. I think the general point of those numbers, though

Human Resources committee  To the early nineties. We could do the same numbers back to 1993.

Human Resources committee  Yes.

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

Human Resources committee  I guess you're referring to the comment on marriage or common-law relationships playing a role in people exiting low income. We basically use longitudinal data where we track individuals through time. We observe a single person who's in low income, and we look at the probability

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  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  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.