Critics blast report suggesting poverty is often temporary
Posted November 20, 2012 11:08 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Does inequality really matter? Critics are blasting a report suggesting most low-income earners climb out of poverty quickly.
The Fraser Institute’s Measuring Income Mobility in Canada report suggests four in five of Canada’s lowest earners moved up the income ladder over 10 years. The institute highlights rags to riches scenarios for some of the country’s poorest over a 19-year period.
“It’s basically the Fraser Institute’s way of saying inequality doesn’t matter, that people don’t stay poor and people don’t stay rich and therefore we have nothing to be worried about,” says Seth Klein, BC Director for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
“In saying that inequality isn’t a concern, they are offside from leading economists around the world — the IMF, the OECD, the Bank of Canada — all of whom have expressed grave concerns about growing inequality.”
Klein suggests there is a kernel of truth in the Fraser Institute’s report, but it doesn’t look at all the statistics.
“There’s always some churn in terms of who stays poor and who moves up and who moves down, but that’s also not true for many people and, importantly, there’s less income mobility in Canada than there used to be,” he counters.
The Fraser Institute suggests focusing on comparisons of high and low-income groups at specific points in time results in an incomplete analysis of income inequality.
