living standards

Quebec and P.E.I. are the happiest, says a new report

Everyone got very excited over that census data showing median earnings for individuals had barely moved (after inflation) in the 25 years from 1980 to 2005. Of course, as critics pointed out, there’s a load of qualifiers buried in that shocking result: earnings, rather than total income, including transfers and capital income; individuals, rather than families; endpoint data, rather than longitudinal. Had the study elected instead to track total family income, and had it tracked this data throughout the entire period, it would instead have shown rather robust growth for much of that time, broken by steep declines after the two recessions.