The Financial Accountability
Office of
Ontario recently issued a report called Incomes in Ontario:
Growth, Distribution and Mobility which summarizes recent trends in personal
income in Ontario in the areas of income growth and distribution. Among the findings were that Ontario’s median
income growth was the slowest among the provinces between 2000 and 2016, that there
has been an increase in income inequality in the province, and that relative
and inter-generational income mobility
has declined – that is over time, it has become more difficult for lower income
Ontarians to move up the income distribution and that children of higher income
parents are more likely to become high income earners themselves.
As the report states:
“It has become more difficult for Ontarians
to “get ahead” – that is, move up the income distribution. In this report,
upward income mobility is defined as the share of working-age Ontarians who
move up at least one income quintile over a five-year period. This share
declined from 41 per cent in the early 1980s to 32 per cent more recently. The
decline was most pronounced for lower-income Ontarians.” Moreover, what is also of interest is that
while Ontario’s productivity has grown, incomes have not kept pace suggesting
that Ontario’s economic growth has not translated directly into increased
personal incomes.
Much of this report
focused on Ontario wide trends but one of the most interesting pieces of
information is Figure B.1 in the appendices - a map titled Median
household income across census divisions in Ontario. In this map, median household income from the
2016 Census is plotted by major census division in Ontario in four categories –
Less than $65,000, $65,000 to $69,999, $70,000 to $74,999 and finally more than
$75,000. The map taken from the report
is shown below and illustrates Ontario’s great regional economic divides.
Ontario’s highest
household income regions stand out as mainly two islands on the map – the area
surrounding downtown Toronto – that is the GTA and central Ontario – and the
Ottawa region. Downtown Toronto itself
has substantially lower household incomes than the surrounding GTA and GTA belt
area. The east and the southwest have swathes of lower income areas and then
there is the North.
