The Retirement Plans and Expectations of Non-retired Canadians Aged 45 to 59
This study examines retirement issues for older working Canadians: income, pension coverage, home ownership status, immigration status, marital status and self-assessed health. It uses data from the 2002 General Social Survey.
Will They Ever Converge? Earnings of Immigrant and Canadian-born Workers over the Last Two Decades 1
Using Census data covering the 1980–2000 period, this article examines what outcomes would be necessary for today's recent immigrant cohorts to achieve earnings parity with Canadian-born workers. Our results show that today's recent immigrants would have to experience a drastic steepening of their relative age-earnings profile in the near future for their earnings to converge with their Canadian-born counterparts. The reason is simple: the greater relative earnings growth experienced by recent immigrant cohorts has only partially offset the drastic deterioration in their relative earnings at entry.
Aging and Demographic Change
Population aging is often perceived in a negative way, through concerns about public pensions, the demand for health care, the needs of older people for personal assistance, declining economic production, the accumulation of social responsibilities in the "sandwich" generation, and divisions between young and old. The purpose of this article is neither to confirm, nor to deny, these concerns. Rather, its purpose is to contextualize them in order to arrive at a more balanced view. Three main conclusions are drawn: (i) multidimensional demographic analysis is required; (ii) the policy significance of older people in the future may not be the same as their policy significance today; and (iii) other factors need to be considered alongside demographic factors in making policy choices.