I was reading up on poverty reduction policies and I came across a paragraph by Dalhousie University economics professor Lars Osberg that was just begging to be shared and discussed on PolicyNote:
Iglika Ivanova’s Blog Posts
Iglika Ivanova is the Public Interest Researcher at the CCPA’s BC Office. Her work investigates issues and trends in health care, education and social programs, and examines the impact of public services on quality of life. She also looks into issues of government finance, taxation and privatization and how they relate to the accessibility and quality of public services. Iglika’s other research interests focus on the Canadian labour market and in particular trends in income inequality, low wage work and the integration of immigrants.
Do we need a business case for poverty reduction?
August 25th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · 3 Comments · Poverty, inequality & welfare
Tags:
Will the HST boost job growth and when?
July 6th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · No Comments · Economy, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
As BC and Ontario have now started paying the HST at the till, many people may be wondering when exactly can we expect to see those jobs postings opening up. This is a good question. According to analysis commissioned by the BC government from economist Jack Mintz, titled British Columbia’s Harmonized Sales Tax: A Giant [...]
On the economic impacts of the HST
July 5th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · No Comments · Economy, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
My previous HST post focused on the impact of the tax on households and I concluded that it’s likely that it will cost families and that some modest income families will be hurt by the tax. Is this sufficient reason to campaign for the tax to be repealed? Not necessarily. Public policy is about choices [...]
The HST and BC family budgets
June 24th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · 9 Comments · Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
That the HST will take a bite out of family budgets is clear to everyone. The main question right now is just how big of a bite. Two studies released earlier this week asked this exact question but came to very different conclusions. On Monday, the Fraser Institute released a paper arguing that lower and [...]
Tags: HST
A new era for measuring poverty in Canada
June 18th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · 1 Comment · Poverty, inequality & welfare, Transparency & accountability
Last Thursday’s Statistics Canada release of individual and household income data for 2008 marks a new era in the study of poverty in Canada. Instead of reporting only on the Low Income Cut Offs (LICO), as they used to, Statistics Canada reported on three of the most common measures of low income in the same [...]
Tags: data availability·low income·measurement·Statistics Canada
The job market may be recovering but some jobs are not coming back
May 18th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · 1 Comment · Economy, Employment & labour
A recent article in The New York Times illustrates this point with the story of an unemployed administrative assistant in her 50s, who has not been able to find a job for over two years after being laid off. As the journalist explains, her difficulties are likely not the result of age discrimination, the weak [...]
Tags: Economy·employment·recovery
Job creation alone will not solve BC’s poverty problem
April 29th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · No Comments · Economy, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Provincial budget & finance
Whenever he’s confronted with questions about BC’s record high child poverty rates or by the growing income inequality in the province, our Premier maintains that the best social policy is a job. In fact, reducing the costs of doing business in BC seems to be this government’s chief economic strategy. Consider the HST, for example, [...]
Tags: Economy·job creation·OECD·poverty·poverty reduction·working poverty
Have taxes changed all that much over the past half century?
April 20th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · 3 Comments · Taxes
Yesterday, the Fraser Institute released its Consumer Tax Index report, which claims to show that the average Canadian family’s tax bill has increased by a whopping 1,624% since 1961. There are a lot of things wrong with Fraser Institute’s math. Here are just a few of them. To begin with, the numbers should have been [...]
Tags: Fraser Institute·Taxes
It’s not just about size: what makes up our tax bill matters
April 20th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · No Comments · Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes, Transparency & accountability
The Fraser Institute and the CCPA do not typically see eye to eye, but they seem to agree that personal income taxes take up a relatively small fraction of the average tax bill — about 13 – 14%. According to the Fraser Institute’s recent report on the average Canadian family’s tax bill, the average family [...]
Tags: equity·Fraser Institute·income taxes·tax cuts·tax fairness·Taxes
Are Canadians paying too much in taxes?
April 20th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · No Comments · Taxes
It’s tax season and people are looking more closely at their incomes and the amount of taxes they pay. The Fraser Institute released their annual Consumer Tax Index report yesterday, claiming that the total tax bill of the average Canadian family now takes up 41.7% of their income. This seems like a big number, which [...]
