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In this chapter, Lars Osberg and Andrew Sharpe provide an overview of trends in a number of dimensions of economic well-being (consumption flows, stocks of wealth, income equality, and economic security) from the lens of the Index of Economic Well-being, a new composite measure of economic...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005650207
A major development in the Canadian labour market in the 1990s has been the decline in labour force participation. This issue of Canadian Business Economics consists of a symposium of articles that explore this issue. The idea for this symposium came out of a December 1997 workshop on labour...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005481872
Labour force participation rates vary greatly by age, with persons 55 and over having much lower participation rates than younger persons. Consequently, changes in the demographic composition of the population can exert a long-run effect on aggregate participation rates. In the third article of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005481873
In contrast to the decline in labour force participation in Canada in the 1990s, the aggregate participation rate in the United States actually rose slightly (up 0.5 percentage points between 1989 and 1997). This US experience provides a useful benchmark for the analysis of the Canadian...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005481874
Of the three major age groups, youth (aged 15-24), experienced the largest fall in labour force participation and accounted for the lion’s share of the aggregate decline. Consequently, an understanding of the factors behind this development is essential to an overall understanding of the fall...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005157596
The participation rate of women aged 25-64 rose greatly in the 1970s and 1980s, but has stagnated in the 1990s. In principle, this development could reflect either the poor growth performance of the economy this decade or the completion of the integration of women into the labour force. In the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005650261
Cyclical, policy changes, and structural factors have been put forward to explain the decline in labour force participation in Canada in the 1990s. In the first article in the symposium, Pierre Fortin and Mario Fortin attempt to determine the relative importance of these three types of factors...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005650262
In this chapter, Andrew Sharpe provides a comprehensive non-technical introduction to the productivity issue, including discussion of productivity concepts, measurement issues, trends and prospects. He begins by noting that productivity is the relationship between the output of goods and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005650208
Wage formation is often analyzed by assuming that wage differentials reflect productivity differentials intrinsic to the workers, like differences in skill or qualification. Observed industry and firm effects on wages suggests, however, that wage differentials may result from causes rather...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008620611
Productivity research is Canada has traditionally focused on narrow economic issues. In our view, it has given inadequate attention to the broader ramifications of productivity, both in terms of shedding light on the importance of productivity for the advancement of various aspects of social...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005518911