Q&A: David Hulchanski, the U of T professor sounding the alarm on income inequality
David Hulchanski has been thinking about affordability and cities ever since he moved here from upstate New York in the late ’60s (tuition was cheaper in Canada). After decades of research, the University of Toronto professor is currently best known for his series of “Three Cities” reports, which detail the steady disappearance of middle-income neighbourhoods in Toronto and other Canadian cities. Over the years, Hulchanski has emerged as the voice of scientific inquiry into income polarization in Canada, his name regularly invoked in legislative chambers and in the media. We asked him about growing inequality in Toronto, what the loss of the mandatory long-form census means for his research, and making $1.25 an hour at his first job.
How did you become so invested in the idea of inequality?
I was always involved in issues like this, right from high school, and I just continued. As a professor, part of my job is research. In the past ten years we’ve had a couple of very large social science research grants focused on income inequality, income polarization, and how cities and neighbourhoods are changing. This is during a period where income inequality and income polarization are dramatically growing.
And then there was the Occupy movement. Some people say, “oh, what did it achieve?” It put inequality on the broad public agenda. People have been writing about poverty forever, but poverty is about one defined group within society, whereas income inequality is about what is happening to everyone in society.
Why is that an important distinction for you?
It’s moving on from a narrow discussion. I think poverty was a proper discussion in its day, which was, frankly, the ’50s and ’60s. It’s in the ’80s and especially the ’90s that everything changed. We introduced tax cuts and tax breaks to help people who pay a lot of taxes, not those who pay very little taxes. We began redistributing income up. We’re now 25 years into this, so there’s plenty of data to illustrate that the issue is growing income inequality, and the growing redistribution of income from the middle upward, putting more and more people in the lowest group, with minimum wage jobs and all that.
My first job was in the late ’60s as a busboy at Woolworth’s. I made $1.25 an hour. If you inflation-adjust that to today, it’s near $10 an hour. It’s only recently that the minimum wage here reached $10 an hour, and now it’s a touch higher, but all prices are way higher today. I left university with no debt. It was a different world.
Your research has earned a lot of media attention in recent years. How have you managed to do that?
Just by doing our best. You get to know some reporters, you make some judgement calls. The first “Three Cities” report came out in 2007 and covered a period up until 2001. It was my decision to contact the Globe and Mail rather than the Toronto Star to say, “We have this report and here’s what it shows. Are you interested?” They wanted an exclusive and we said yes. They put it on their front page.
Your landmark “Three Cities” research on inequality in Toronto wouldn’t have been possible without the mandatory long-form census, which was eliminated in 2011. What happens if it never comes back?
When we submitted the proposal for the social science research grant we now have, we said that our research may have to be, in effect, historical research covering 1971 to 2006. From ’71 on, the census has been consistent and highly professional, and we can study trends during that period. We still have individual income data from the Canada Revenue Agency, so we can still update income, which is vitally important in the study of inequality and inequality trends. But we can’t link any of that CRA income data to other demographic characteristics—like age, ethnicity or immigration. That’s what has been lost.
Why is Toronto so sharply divided between rich and poor?
Four things explain Toronto’s situation, and while cities can do something, they can’t do much. First is the labour market. Most people work, and most new jobs are not quality paying jobs with benefits. It’s the provinces and the feds that make rules about the labour market, about unionization. Then comes housing, the most expensive budget item for the average person. Housing prices are outpacing inflation. Then there are cutbacks to social benefits. We exited World War II talking about social security. We got rid of all that. Finally, what don’t Canadians talk about? Discrimination. Where do you find newspaper articles, magazine articles, about discrimination in Canada? Housing discrimination, labour market discrimination, education discrimination. Oh, we’re not as bad as the United States? Well, I hope so! But Canadians don’t live in the United States.
So, are you for redistribution from the rich back to the middle?
Out there in society, anybody who mentions redistribution is jumped on, as if it’s some sort of crazy idea. It isn’t. We are doing redistribution right now, and we’ve been doing it for years. How is it that so much more of our national income goes to a minority at the top? It’s larger than the one per cent—it’s the top 10 per cent or 15 per cent. People with good jobs, like tenured professors and other professionals, are doing really well compared to our equivalents twenty years ago, whereas the rest of the population compared to their equivalents twenty years ago are doing way worse. We are engaged in redistribution. We’ve got to stop redistributing income to the top. They don’t need it.
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David Hulchanski has been thinking about affordability and cities ever since he moved here from upstate New York in the late '60s (tuition was cheaper in Canada). After decades of research, the University of Toronto professor is currently best known for his series of “Three Cities” reports, which detail the steady disappearance of middle-income neighbourhoods in Toronto and other Canadian cities. Over the years, Hulchanski has emerged as the voice of scientific inquiry into income polarization in Canada, his name regularly invoked in legislative chambers and in the media. We asked him about growing inequality in Toronto, what the loss of the mandatory long-form census means for his research, and making $1.25 an hour at his first job.
How did you become so invested in the idea of inequality?
I was always involved in issues like this, right from high school, and I just continued. As a professor, part of my job is research. In the past ten years we’ve had a couple of very large social science research grants focused on income inequality, income polarization, and how cities and neighbourhoods are changing. This is during a period where income inequality and income polarization are dramatically growing.
And then there was the Occupy movement. Some people say, “oh, what did it achieve?” It put inequality on the broad public agenda. People have been writing about poverty forever, but poverty is about one defined group within society, whereas income inequality is about what is happening to everyone in society.
Why is that an important distinction for you?
It’s moving on from a narrow discussion. I think poverty was a proper discussion in its day, which was, frankly, the '50s and '60s. It’s in the '80s and especially the '90s that everything changed. We introduced tax cuts and tax breaks to help people who pay a lot of taxes, not those who pay very little taxes. We began redistributing income up. We’re now 25 years into this, so there’s plenty of data to illustrate that the issue is growing income inequality, and the growing redistribution of income from the middle upward, putting more and more people in the lowest group, with minimum wage jobs and all that.
My first job was in the late '60s as a busboy at Woolworth’s. I made $1.25 an hour. If you inflation-adjust that to today, it’s near $10 an hour. It’s only recently that the minimum wage here reached $10 an hour, and now it’s a touch higher, but all prices are way higher today. I left university with no debt. It was a different world.
Your research has earned a lot of media attention in recent years. How have you managed to do that?
Just by doing our best. You get to know some reporters, you make some judgement calls. The first “Three Cities” report came out in 2007 and covered a period up until 2001. It was my decision to contact the Globe and Mail rather than the Toronto Star to say, "We have this report and here’s what it shows. Are you interested?" They wanted an exclusive and we said yes. They put it on their front page.
Your landmark “Three Cities” research on inequality in Toronto wouldn’t have been possible without the mandatory long-form census, which was eliminated in 2011. What happens if it never comes back?
When we submitted the proposal for the social science research grant we now have, we said that our research may have to be, in effect, historical research covering 1971 to 2006. From '71 on, the census has been consistent and highly professional, and we can study trends during that period. We still have individual income data from the Canada Revenue Agency, so we can still update income, which is vitally important in the study of inequality and inequality trends. But we can’t link any of that CRA income data to other demographic characteristics—like age, ethnicity or immigration. That’s what has been lost.
Why is Toronto so sharply divided between rich and poor?
Four things explain Toronto’s situation, and while cities can do something, they can’t do much. First is the labour market. Most people work, and most new jobs are not quality paying jobs with benefits. It’s the provinces and the feds that make rules about the labour market, about unionization. Then comes housing, the most expensive budget item for the average person. Housing prices are outpacing inflation. Then there are cutbacks to social benefits. We exited World War II talking about social security. We got rid of all that. Finally, what don’t Canadians talk about? Discrimination. Where do you find newspaper articles, magazine articles, about discrimination in Canada? Housing discrimination, labour market discrimination, education discrimination. Oh, we’re not as bad as the United States? Well, I hope so! But Canadians don’t live in the United States.
So, are you for redistribution from the rich back to the middle?
Out there in society, anybody who mentions redistribution is jumped on, as if it’s some sort of crazy idea. It isn’t. We are doing redistribution right now, and we’ve been doing it for years. How is it that so much more of our national income goes to a minority at the top? It’s larger than the one per cent—it’s the top 10 per cent or 15 per cent. People with good jobs, like tenured professors and other professionals, are doing really well compared to our equivalents twenty years ago, whereas the rest of the population compared to their equivalents twenty years ago are doing way worse. We are engaged in redistribution. We’ve got to stop redistributing income to the top. They don’t need it.){kind=link}
I don’t agree with anything in this article
I hire a lot of young people. They all seem to be in the hunt for a government job. The line of people wanting to joint the fire department, in “PoliceFoundations” courses, etc, is huge. They have all done the math. Economically the world has gotten much smaller. Regular people pretty much compete on the world stage for their employment and pay check. By contrast the government bureaucracy has continued on in their own comfortable vacuum, oblivious to the economic turmoil regular people are living with. A retired civil servant lives a very different life than retired people from the private sector. And, it goes further than simply civil servants. The federal government spent $1,200,000,000 staging the G20 in Toronto. This money ended up, mostly, in the bank accounts of people who had themselves positioned well enough to catch it. Governments control and spend about half the wealth generated in this country. Some very sophisticated people, both inside and outside, the government bureaucracy have become very good at grabbing as much as they can…. Sure, the new economy is producing some billionaires, but they are the exception. The gap between people with their heads firmly in the government trough, and everyone else, is the real income equality that matters.
Really? You don’t believe income inequality exists in Toronto, let alone the whole country? Cause it does. Big time
You’re missing the point entirely.
Maybe someone should study where people’s wages go in their careers. In this article he states he started out at $1.25 a hour and now is a professor, a much larger salary. If we have a society were if you are born into a poor socioeconomic group you are destined to be poor and if you are born into a wealthy socioeconomic group you are destined to wealthy then we have problem. We don’t have that. If you work hard you have just a good chance as the average Canadian to do well. There is no data to disprove that. People have to take responsibility and not blame government for not paying them $100,000 a year.
An interesting data point is most of the %1 work 55-60+ hours per week. Combine that over your whole life when everyone else is working only 40 and you have a pretty significant difference.
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Interesting, because most of the bottom 50% also work 55-60 hours per week. Because on >$10/hr with $1500/mo rent and $6/rt subway ride, you actually need that much money just to live.
The bottom 50% don’t work 55-60 hours per week. Thats not supported is any actual data produced by a reliable source.
Neither is yours. There is no reliable source that collects data on working hours.
Here a link to a study by a UBC professor, an interesting point is quoted below.
“Fifty-two percent of people in the top 1 per cent work at least 50 hours a week, compared to less than 20 per cent for the overall population”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/who-are-the-richest-1-per-cent-in-canada-theyre-not-just-ceos/article4231232
We have to stop putting articles in papers blaming government or someone else for low wages. It is up to the individual to make something of themselves. The only sure way to success is to work harder then the other person.
What kind of life do you have when you work 55 or 60 hours a week? The job situation in Canada is pathetic. The young come out of universities with huge debt and access to low paying service jobs. When you look at the type of new jobs created from stats Canada theye are all either part time or service jobs. The federal government has done a poor job of creating an atmosphere where new, creative and high paying industries want to come to Canada that is other than oil. Where are the jobs where you work a 40 hour week, come home to your family and still be able to afford a home?
Income inequality affects our future. The top 1% grab more than 20% of the wealth available leaving the rest to squable over the remainder.
And yet 2/3 of Canadians work 45 hours+ /week:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/canadas-work-life-balance-more-off-kilter-than-ever/article4673216/
The long-form census is not a good source (because it measures perception, rather than real hours on the job) and top-earning jobs are usually annual salary rather than hourly income. And the article you’ve cited is misleading, because it doesn’t look at top earners vs. other _workers_, but 1% vs. everyone else over 18: students, retirees, the disabled, stay-at-home parents, etc.
According to the more reliable GSS, more than 3/4 of people who work 50+ hours a week make >$60k per year. You’ll have to look through the data yourself, but here’s the link: http://www3.norc.org/GSS+Website/Download/SPSS+Format/
Thank you for investing your time and knowledge in this very important area! I am in a higher income bracket but have had my share of struggles and continue to see the gap widen between rich and poor while the middle class is an endangered species
Finally, what don’t Canadians talk about? Discrimination. Where do you find newspaper articles, magazine articles, about discrimination in Canada? Housing discrimination, labour market discrimination, education discrimination. Oh, we’re not as bad as the United States? Well, I hope so!….WHO WILL HAVE THE BALLS IN CANADA TO DEAL WITH THIS, SQUARELY?
.
I’m pretty sure someone knows how many hrs/week they work, especially those who aren’t salaried.