Business

INTERACTIVE: Where the one per cent lives

Part two of our series on Canada’s richest cities

This interactive graphic is best viewed in Firefox, Safari or Chrome. Click here for instructions.

Earlier this week, we showed you how the commodity boom has changed the ranks of Canada’s richest cities in this interactive graphic.

This time, inspired by the latest round of debate over Canada’s income inequality (see Andrew Coyne’s column here and Stephen Gordon’s response on Econowatch here), we decided to take a look at where the one per cent lives. Statistics Canada data on 2010 tax-filers who made at least $250,000, which is roughly the threshold of the top income percentile, reveals a similar story.

Many of the cities that boast the highest per capita incomes also have the highest concentration of quarter-millionaires and up. Nine out of the 20 metropolitan areas with the highest number of one-percenters per head, including the top four, are in Alberta. Fort McMurray, which came in first in our ranking of Canada’s richest cities, scores second place here. Saskatchewan, another resource boom story, counts three names on the list, only one shy of Ontario.

Still, when you look at high-income earners in absolute numbers, you see a more familiar story: Canada’s four biggest cities are also home to the largest ranks of the one per cent—with Toronto counting over 47,000 tax-filers who declared $250,000 or more in income. If you want to hang with the rich, it seems, that’s still the place to be.

From the archives:
RANK YOUR INCOME, WHERE DO YOU STAND COMPARED TO THE REST OF CANADA?

INSTRUCTIONS:

MAP: Hover over the dots on the map to view more information about cities and their number of 250,000+ earners per heard. You can zoom-in by using the toolbar on the upper left-hand side or by double-clicking on the map. To grab and move the map, press SHIFT and click. Click on the “home” symbol in the toolbar to restore the original settings.

BAR CHARTS: Click on the symbol below the charts to rearrange them from the lowest to the highest values. Click again to order them alphabetically.

Use the “Province” tool bar on the right to view select provinces on both the map and the bar charts.

Have fun!

*Research: Jason Kirby. Visualization and text: Erica Alini.

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