Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here this morning.
I am going to go through the presentation, which I believe was distributed.
In the centre for education statistics at StatsCan, we are currently undertaking a number of innovative new initiatives around data for education that will help us better understand the pathways people are taking through the education system, through college, university, or the trades, and on into the labour market.
I'm going to draw today on some of these initiatives and other data sources to bring evidence to your questions on whether some poverty reduction strategies in education are making a difference for vulnerable populations. I'll move fairly quickly through the presentation to keep to my timeline.
Starting with access to education, one factor affecting access, as seen in our youth in transition survey data, is parents' income. As parents' income increases, youths' participation in post-secondary education also increases. However, if you look more closely at the difference between the lowest and the highest incomes, factors such as parents' education and parents' expectations of their children explain much of the participation gap there. In fact, the financial constraints account for only about 12% according to the study.
Although income is a barrier, we know from our survey of financial security that parents are increasingly saving for their children's education. If we think of the RESP as a school-based poverty reduction strategy, the data here show that since the Canada education savings grant was introduced in January 1988, there was an increase in families saving for their children's post-secondary education, even at the bottom income level, between 1999 and 2012.
The cost of post-secondary education, however, is increasing. From our tuition and living accommodation costs survey, the data show that undergraduate tuition fees have increased in almost every province between 2008-2009 and 2016-2017, except in Newfoundland and Labrador and Alberta. From our 2013 national graduate survey, we know that more than four out of ten post-secondary education students who graduated in 2010 had debt on graduation.
What we don't have on this slide is the current financial support data from ESDC and the provinces and territories. We are currently negotiating with both levels of government to get this data and to integrate it into our holdings in order to have a better picture of the impact of costs on access to education and of what those real costs are.
There are many reasons people may seek further skills training or retraining to equip themselves for a better employment situation, but today I'd like to draw your attention to evidence that shows how basic training for literacy and numeracy is also important when thinking of skills training.
Recent immigrants, unattached non-elderly persons, aboriginal people, lone parents, and people with activity limitations, which are all groups at risk of low income, have higher proportions of low literacy scores compared with those of the overall population of all individuals. Basic training for literacy and numeracy is also important when we think of skills training.
Another factor affecting people's likelihood of getting employment is their ability to speak English or French. From the longitudinal immigration database, if we tease out the impact of official language skills on earnings by taking into account all kinds of things such as the year you landed, class of immigration, age, education, source region, experience, and geography, the language profile still has an impact on the earnings of immigrants. This graph compares the earnings of immigrants with various language abilities with the earnings of immigrants who had English as their mother tongue. Language training is critical to improving earnings for recent immigrants without English as their mother tongue.
Apprenticeship offers another avenue to employment and better income. Our registered apprenticeship information system shows that greater proportions of both younger and older Canadians are registering as apprentices in 2013 versus in 1995. The 2016 national apprenticeship survey results that will be released in March 2017 will help us better understand the changing age profile as well as barriers to completing programs, and much more.
The next slide shows a gender picture, which I think it is important to note. Women make up only 12% of people with apprenticeship certificates. Among these women, a third are hairstylists and aestheticians. In general, earnings in the top female trades are substantially lower than in the top male trades. For example, hairstylists and aestheticians earn around $25,000 a year whereas electricians earn over $70,000.
Now let's look at the relationship between education, employment, and income. For both men and women, those with less than high school education have the lowest earnings and those with a university degree have the highest earnings. So the relationship is pretty clear.
The 2011 national household survey data show that the tendency to get higher education is increasing for aboriginal people, but this chart, which uses labour force survey data, shows that as education levels of aboriginal people rise, their unemployment rates go down and become similar to those of the total population. That's looking at the off-reserve aboriginal groups. On the next slide you can also see similarly smaller gaps in employment rates for people with disabilities compared to the general population as education levels increase.
To conclude, in poverty reduction strategies, it seems clear that the Canada education savings grant has improved savings for families at all income levels, but importantly for those with the lowest incomes. Literacy training and English and French as a second language training are clearly important to equipping vulnerable groups for employment. Of course, you can think of higher education itself as a way to reduce poverty, and we can see benefits to those at risk of low income who obtain post-secondary credentials.
Thank you.