Income Inequality On the Rise in Canada

While it's a great time to be wealthy (when isn't it?), the gap between the rich and the poor is growing faster here than in the U.S.

Income inequality in Canada is growing faster than in just about every other similar country in the world, with even the U.S. lagging behind us. A Conference Board of Canada report finds that while the gulf between the rich and poor is still the widest in the U.S., Canada is quickly catching up. Between the mid 1990s and the past few years, Canada's Gini index (a measure used to track income inequality) has grown from 0.293 to 0.320, while in the U.S., it's grown from 0.361 to 0.378. On the Gini index, a score of zero means everyone in the country makes the same amount, while a score of one means just one person holds all the wealth. Scores above 0.40 indicate a society with extremely high income inequality. This means that while Canada's income distribution is still stable, over the past two decades, most of the wealth created in this country has exclusively gone to the richest fifth of the population, while everyone else has just sort of coasted along.