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The Age of Increasing Inequality
The Astonishing Rise of Canada's 1%
For 35 years, Canada has become vastly wealthier, but most people have not. This book documents the dramatic and rapid growth in inequality. It identifies the causes. It proposes meaningful steps to halt and reverse this trend.
Lars Osberg looks separately at the top, middle and bottom of Canadian incomes. He provides new data which illuminate the exact nature of the rapid rise in inequality, and in particular the way virtually all the economic gains of the last 20 years have gone to Canada’s 1 percent.
He identifies several causes for this new development. Trade deals have been a major contributor to limiting the growth of incomes for workers. The gradual decline of unions in the private sector has been a contributor. Growing high salaries for corporate executives, managers, and some fortunate professionals have had a significant impact. Lars Osberg offers an analysis of why increasing inequality is bad for social cohesion and economic development, and argues that its unfairness is toxic to public life.
This book provides an up to date, readable account of a topic of major interest and importance in Canadian economic life and Canadian public policy.
Contributors
Lars Osberg
LARS OSBERG is McCulloch Professor of Economics at Dalhousie University with research interests in labour economics and income and wealth distribution. He received his PhD in Economics from Yale University and has published numerous articles in academic journals and seven books. He is past President of the Canadian Economics Association. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
