Of cities more and more unequal

City of Calgary
It was in Calgary that the gap is more widened, since the inequalities have seen an increase of 70% in forty-five years.

Julia Posca

Thursday, march 1, 2018 08:08

UPDATE
Thursday, march 1, 2018 08:18

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I have discovered by falling on an article (poorly translated), the Huffington Post, the existence of a group of inter-university research, which has been working since 2004 on inequality in the cities and towns in Canada. One of their most recent publication draws from data of the census of 2016, a portrait of concern among major canadian cities.

The finding of their main study is that canadian cities are becoming more polarized : there are more and more poor and the rich, but less and less people of the middle class. More precisely, one observes, since the 1970s, an increase in the proportion of people who, within the population of the metropolitan areas, have lower incomes, [1] or higher[2] than the average, while the proportion of people whose income falls within the average[3] has tended to decline.

It was in Calgary that the gap is more widened, since the inequalities have seen an increase of 70% in forty-five years. However, this is Toronto, who won the palm of the city with the most unequal. It finds both a concentration of employment in high-income, particularly in the finance sector, but also an immigrant population large, whose incomes tend to be lower than average.

The portrait is less dramatic in the Greater Montreal area, but the socio-economic status of the inhabitants of the metropolitan region has experienced a meaningful transformation. The percentage of people that have incomes ranging around the average has increased from 70% in 1970, to 57% in 2015.

The share of residents who have a high income, for its part, increased by one percentage point during this period, from 16% in 1970 to 17% in 2015. In contrast, the proportion of Montrealers who have an income considered low has doubled. It was 13% in 1970, and then to 26% in 2015. So it is now more than one person in four who has low incomes compared to the average in the greater Montreal area. We can see in a 2005 study that the northern and southern suburbs of Montreal are enriched, while many pockets of poverty have emerged on the island, in particular, in areas that have a high concentration of citizens and citizens of immigrant background, such as Montreal-North, St-Michel or Côte-des-Neiges.

How do you explain this evolution ? The reasons are many, but the authors identify four main that are valid for all the urban centres :

• the decrease in transfers to the poor and tax cuts granted to the wealthiest has contributed to the increasing inequality ;

• the change in the industrial fabric of cities has led to a decrease in unionized jobs in the manufacturing sector and a growth of precarious jobs in the service sector ;

• the rising price of real estate has driven out the owners of the class average, while the supply of social housing insufficient hunting the poor people of some neighbourhoods ;

• the change in the source of immigrants has been accompanied by a discrimination greater in the place of the people racialized, who are concentrated in certain areas where the housing remains affordable.

We knew that inequality rose in the country for at least three decades, a trend which has not escaped the Quebec. However, these data allow us to see the spatial dimension of these gaps between rich and poor. Cities are the locus of a social divide growing which is undermining social cohesion and that in the long term may contribute to the exacerbation of social tensions. The challenge for municipal governments, since they do not have all the levers to act on the problems that lie behind the growth of inequality. However, it is important to find solutions to this situation to ensure that cities remain places of life accessible to the less affluent, and attractive to the middle classes. In short, spaces in which one can thrive living communities and diversified.

[1] In the study, the concept of low income is equivalent to income before taxes, which is at least 20% lower than the average income.

[2] The concept of a high income is equivalent to income before taxes, which is at least 20% higher than the average.

[3] The concept of average income is equivalent to income before taxes, which is more than 20% lower or 20% higher than the average income.