
A tale of two Canadas: Where you grew up affects your income in adulthood - Geekette
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-tale-of-two-canadas-where-you-grow-up-affects-your-adult-income/article35444594/
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mabbo
A lot of that map is explained by oil:
[https://www.spec2000.net/text100fp/cdnoilmap.jpg](https://www.spec2000.net/text100fp/cdnoilmap.jpg)

In the last couple decades, it's become affordable to mine tarsands. The oil
boom has meant people in those places make a lot more money. Naturally, they
are making more money than their parents did.

The other green area is Toronto. If you're 40-50 in Toronto today, you
probably bought a house in your late 20s or early 30s, which has now
quadrupled on value.

All of that to say, many of the places where mobility is rising may be short
lived. In reality, we may be an entire country of low mobility, except for the
few lucky areas.

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Tortoise
This makes no sense. Every large city is dark green (the best.) Vancouver,
Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City. Even Montreal is light green.
Most smaller cities—like Halifax, Winnipeg, Saskatoon—are also dark green.

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DKnoll
A city is defined as 100,000 population or greater in Canada, none of the
cities you mentioned are small given that context. A good example of a small
Canadian city is Thunder Bay. I'd give you more... but I'm from the GTA. ;)

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jfim
One chart towards the end mentions that in most cases, children earn more than
their parents; it would be interesting to compare the affordability of housing
across generations. It seems that even as if children earn more (in inflation-
adjusted dollars), their dollars are worth less for housing due to housing
prices increasing faster than inflation.

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microcolonel
In spite of rising downtown housing costs, home ownership rates are
outrageously high in Canada, probably even higher than the theoretical
optimum.

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lawnchair_larry
This generalization doesn't make a lot of sense. What does "Downtown Canada"
even mean? We are talking about a vast country that is larger than the United
States but has 10% of the population. I'd bet there are many downtowns that
are not rising at all.

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uiri
It means downtown Vancouver and downtown Toronto but not downtown Montreal nor
any other "downtown" apparently (Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Quebec
City, Saskatoon, Halifax, etc. come to mind) since Toronto and Vancouver are
the two metro areas with outrageous housing prices.

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kat
It shows exactly how dependent we are on resourced-based economies. The west
coast is all red, forestry and fishing crashed on the west coast, and the
prairies are all green, oil boom from the last few decades. I'm a little
surprised that immigration between provinces did not even out incomes between
the two resource boom/bust cycles.

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mthoms
You raise a good point - I wonder where are people who changed province are
shown on the map? That is, are they indicated by their current province or
that of their upbringing (ie. their parents province)?

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notadoc
> Where you grew up affects your income in adulthood

That certainly extends beyond Canada

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52-6F-62
Dammit, Norfolk County = low mobility.

Coming from one of those rare spots surrounded by deep green of the rather
populous southern Ontario, it's a lack of education and resources and
connectivity.

Three of the schools I went to when I was young have been closed permanently
and razed. There remains one because I switched high schools midway through by
claiming I couldn't receive all of the courses I needed at my local school
(which was true).

When I was in the second grade the school wanted to advance me by five years
after comprehension testing. My parents declined because they were worried I'd
become unsocialized and no other push was made. At that point the school
essentially pushed me to the side and had me make up my own work to do outside
of standardized testing and major projects. By high school severe apathy and
boredom had set in. To get anything out of it I spent most of my time in the
library or on the newly introduced internet. This is the late mid-late 90's.

Key points:

* no public transportation * no private transportation connecting to cities * low number of open jobs outside minimum wage for young people * factories shuttered from the late 90s to early 2000s due to shifting tech and industry and slow adoption in this area * low funding for schools, frequent closures * public schools that remain tend to have lower resources rather than concentrated resources

I live in Toronto, now -- there have been times where I had to white knuckle
my way through to get by here, yet. I'm working on it. That said, Canada (even
my home county) is a great place to live and grow up, and its getting better.

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btilly
It is too bad that the graph doesn't include the USA. That would clearly show
how much better social mobility is in Canada than the USA.

Which is an important but under-appreciated fact.

~~~
xiaoma
It really depends on how you define social mobility. Immigrants in the US
often jump from the bottom to top income quartiles within a single generation.

For those born in the US, there's less movement and that's exactly what would
be expected in a system that has been relatively meritocratic for multiple
generations. Regardless of whether of the previous generation excelled due to
cultural or hereditary reasons, their children will likely inherit both.
Children also inherit money, which is a factor. However, if money were the
_primary_ factor, poor immigrant families would tend to remain poor and they
don't.

The times when there's a great deal of mobility between generations of native
populations is when there's a change in structural obstacles (or benefits).
This can be seen especially clearly in Jewish populations in the US when
various discriminatory regulations were removed early last century or with
(ethnically) Asian Americans later in the century. In both cases, many
families made rapid gains in relative income and wealth. In the subsequent
generation, children of the winners generally kept winning and metrics of
"social mobility" displayed a decline, even though society had become
objectively fairer than it had been two generations before.

This isn't to say society is "fair" now, only that simple inter-generational
economic mobility comparisons poorly answer the question of where a
conscientious person with no money would have the best chance of success.

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coldtea
> _However, if money were the primary factor, poor immigrant families would
> tend to remain poor and they don 't._

Well, tons of poor latinos and other would argue otherwise.

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btilly
Most waves of immigrants do well in generations 3 and beyond. Wave 1 does
poorly. And wave 2 is mixed.

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coldtea
At this point, are they immigrants anymore? Generation 2, and even more so 3,
are native born Americans (and culturally too).

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Broken_Hippo
Legally, no, but culturally yes - mostly because of family influence.

The immigrants children born in the US would be american. not immigrants.
However, they are obviously going to get a lot of culture from their parents.
They might get a second language when young, different customs, and more than
likely different food. This was my grandmother. Most of her brothers were
educated and lived decent lives, most definitely better than their parents.

My father - and his brothers and sisters - were split in how well they've
done. The older children did just as well as the previous generation. They had
less influence from the grandmother, but still carried a lot of traditions
forward. The younger children had a rougher life after their father died (the
older children were better able to cope).

My generation is likely the last that'll carry some of the traditions forward.
We are basically normal folks. We have fond memories of eating Syrian food at
Grandma's house, and most of us can cook a bit of it. It isn't often enough
for our children to have fond memories of it. My generation really isn't
passing that stuff along, even though it is part of our memory, our
identities, and we might even talk about it in casual conversation. It just
isn't a distinct enough part of our identity to pointedly pass along.

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Kronopath
It's nice to see the Globe and Mail jumping on the Explorable Explanations
train.

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jfim
Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised to see this high quality reporting from the
Globe and Mail.

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TimPC
The charts in the article are pretty interesting. In some provinces the income
mobility of the bottom fifth is better than some of the middle three groups
(data which is hidden in the article but can be inferred). The article
mentions immigration as a potential cause of this, but it would be interesting
to figure out if there are other reasons why there isn't a general trend line
here.

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elevensies
Are you referring to the fact that if the region is dark green (more than 20%)
for moving into the top quintile from the bottom, it necessitates that another
quintile has a rate less than 20%?

The income quintile boundaries are set nationally, but the movements are
divided locally, there is no such requirement for balancing in a single area.
In theory, a single location could have 100% of people moving into the
national top quintile.

edit: I'm referring to the chart called Rags-to-riches income mobility

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joshlemer
Seeing the map of Vancouver is interesting, West Vancouver ranks poorly,
despite being one of (if not the) richest area in the country.

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pcthrowaway
That map showing the different areas of Vancouver describes the likelihood of
children to exceed their parents income. Since that's a very wealthy area, the
target is higher there.

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lfnoise
people who use red and green on charts can go to hell.

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mwambua
While I don't approve with the way you expressed it... I agree that people
could be a little more considerate of colorblind readers. I almost immediately
give up once I see a scatter plot with red and green. It tends to get worse
the smaller the dots are.

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eigenvector
The guy who made the charts is an acquaintance of mine and I've passed along
your feedback. He wasn't aware of the issue and will keep it in mind for
future work.

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frabbit
Just having dragged the scroller for the embedded sample for Halifax, N.S. a
simple, idle question occurs to me: I presume that this is all not just
regression to the mean? Is there something deeper than that demonstrated here?

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ClashTheBunny
This is actually more likely the "law of small numbers". The lower population
areas have high variation, because there is lower statistical significance to
their resulting "mobility"

I would like to see what it is like for a small sliding scale. Give me the
same data with the ability to slide it over a 10 year or 10 month period. Do
the smaller population areas flip back and forth between "mobile" and
"immobile"?

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microcolonel
This is a good presentation, finally something digestible I can point people
to when I tell them that there is only about a 1/3 chance of a generation
remaining in their income quintile on either end of the spectrum.

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dade_
Interesting, the more (socially) right wing your neighbourhood is, the better
the economic mobility.

What gets lost in the statistics is how many people ran away screaming from
these places and now live all over the world making far more money than their
parents or neighbours dreamed of.

It is interesting to run into people during Christmas and find out where they
live and what they do now.

~~~
Tiktaalik
How on earth was this your takeaway from the article? The impact of social
political views wasn't mentioned once, and Dr. Corak clearly explains the
actual reasons.

Even a glance at the map disproves your point. BC outside of Vancouver and
Victoria is relatively socially conservative, but it's a sea of red due to the
lack of labour demand in those rural areas.

~~~
randomdata
_> How on earth was this your takeaway from the article?_

Perhaps he looked at a map[1]? I have to admit, while there are some clear
deviations, as I flip between the two images the areas with the highest
mobility do seem to follow the Conservative-leaning areas. It is definitely
not a perfect 1:1 mapping, but interesting nevertheless.

What really stands out to me though is that the areas with arable land[2] (and
oil) generally have the most mobility. Makes me wonder if the food and energy
commodities boom from a few years back has skewed the numbers?

[1]
[http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2015/10/na1020-election...](http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2015/10/na1020-election_map_12001.jpg?quality=75&strip=all)

[2]
[http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/16-002-x/2015002/article/14133/...](http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/16-002-x/2015002/article/14133/map/map1-eng.jpg)

~~~
jeromegv
The issue is that the map doesn't account for population density. Toronto has
high population density but it shows up as a very small dot compared to large
country-side-right-leaning regions that will take half the territory of a
province.

~~~
randomdata
I'm not sure population density matters here. The GTA clearly shows up as red
on the political map and green on the mobility map. As mentioned, there are
plenty of places where it does not hold true. In fact, some of the largest
ridings of all (Northern Quebec, Yukon, NWT) are not Conservative leaning, yet
are on the green side for mobility. But there still does seem to be a trend
towards the mobile regions leaning to the right.

~~~
jellicle
The point is that that "dot" of Toronto GTA represents more human beings than
all of Alberta.

You're judging by "geographic space taken up". Your conclusion is actually
that geographic land area leans to the right, or more prosaically, that
liberals move to cities and that coincidentally, oil was found in a right-
leaning province.

~~~
randomdata
The original assertion referred to neighbourhoods, which do tend to grow
inversely to the population density. In my experience, a resident of Toronto
might consider their neighbourhood to be just a block or two. While rural
residents think of their neighbourhood as a many kilometre wide radius.
Census/electoral divisions are a decent proxy for what we are trying to
measure here, I feel. Certainly for the medium-sized rural divisions that are
most relevant to the discussion.

I believe I understand what you and the parent are getting at, but it appears
to be of a different discussion.

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Companion
As well as how well your parents do. I know a ton of people that averaged
their way though school and a career, but were given help early enough from
parents that even in mediocrity they are doing magnitudes better than people
who grew up poor and worked hard.

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SirLJ
Also don't forget the massive immigration and the large percentage of
Canadians born outside Canada - that is one hell of a mobility :-)

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goodJobWalrus
At first, I was surprised about southern BC, but then it could be that it's so
awesome there that people don't want to move.

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Cryptoholic
Does anyone have any details on why coastal BC is so poor on mobility
rankings? It was the one surprise of the article for me.

~~~
kat
I think its because coastal BC is very resource heavy. It use to be fishing
and logging (think bumper stickers with the slogan timber dollars feed my
family). Both of those industries pay well but have been in decline for the
last few decades.

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Horizon_Blue
Very interesting - the situation they describe for those born in Southwestern
Ontario is exactly what happened to me. I was born there, went to a local
university, then moved to Toronto and now make more then my parents do. But
many people I went to high school with that didn't get post-secondary
education remain there, and don't make significantly more then their parents,
and sometimes significantly less.

