Centre for the Study of Living Standards

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📉 🚅 On October 30, 2024, the Centre for the Study of Living Standards released the research report by Andrew Sharpe and Alisaleh Shariati "Explaining the Post-2017 Fall in Productivity in the Transport Sector in Canada" commissioned by Transport Canada - Transports Canada. The report sheds light on the nature of the considerable fall in productivity growth in the transportation and warehousing sector and its implications for the business sector productivity in Canada. It also compares the Canadian transportation productivity performance relative to other advanced economies. Three of the transportation sub-industries, namely air transport, public transit and trucking are found to account for over 78 per cent of the fall in labour productivity growth in the sector between 2017 and 2023. The report provides a detailed analysis of how and why productivity fell in these industries. The report is accessible at https://lnkd.in/gkYBiKxv #Productivity #Transportation #EconomicGrowth

📉 A new report by Centre for the Study of Living Standards entitled” Decline and fall: Trends in family formation and fertility in Canada since 2001,” jointly published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute finds that being part of a family provides incredible benefits, both in terms of income and broader well-being. A few highlights: ·       Adjusting for economies of scale (recognizing that couples require only 1.5 the income of a single person to have the same standard of living) the average single 35-45-year-old has only 49.2 percent of the income of their coupled counterpart. ·       Single parent homes have approximately 35-40 percent less income per family member relative to a two-parent family. ·       Married people have significantly lower incidence of, and better survival rates from both cancer and cardiovascular disease, are less stressed, and are less likely to suffer from depression and other emotional pathologies. Yet despite the overwhelming benefit Canadians are now significantly less likely to form families, and when they do, fewer are choosing to have kids. ·       The proportion of those aged 25-29 who are in a couple dropped by 10.9 percentage points between 2001-2021; younger people are increasingly delaying marriage or common-law relationships into the late 30s or early 40s, with a growing fraction of people remaining single well into middle age. ·       Canada’s fertility rate was only 1.3 in 2022, down from 1.6 in 2016. Policies that make housing more affordable, use the tax system to incentivize family growth and the raising of children, subsidize daycare, and address the rising problem of credentialism by finding ways to reduce the formal educational requirements for jobs will allow young people to marry, afford a house, and have children earlier. 🔍 Read more about our findings here: https://lnkd.in/ebKEhbyS #cdnecon #economics #family #fertility #affordibility

📈 Boosting Early Childhood Educator Wages: A Key to Propelling the Canadian Economy A new report by Centre for the Study of Living Standards for YMCA Canada illustrates the substantial benefits of better wages for ECEs. This report focuses on the implications of raising the wages of fully qualified Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) within the context of the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program. Key findings include: ·       ECEs have low pay relative to workers with similar qualifications or doing similar work. ·       A 25% wage increase for ECEs could attract anywhere anywhere between 58,192 ECEs (low estimate) and 103,746 ECEs (baseline estimate) which would be sufficient to support the expansion of the child care system in Canada. ·       Drawing from Quebec's results and an analysis of the current demand for child care nationwide, ECE wage increases could raise maternal labor force participation rate of mothers with children under the age of five by 7.54 to 8.40 percentage points, potentially adding $2.25 to $2.48 billion annually to Canada's GDP. ·       Overall, for every dollar spent on raising ECE wages, the Canadian economy could see a return up to $1.88 to $2.06. These insights underscore the strategic value of investing in childcare workforce, not just as a sector policy but as an economic growth strategy. 🔍 Read more about our findings here: https://lnkd.in/d4Hd5hSe For the YMCA press release see: https://lnkd.in/gbVvjC6x #cdnecon #economics #childcare #education #economicgrowth

Why is Canadian Productivity so Weak? The 45th issue of the International Productivity Monitor (http://www.csls.ca/ipm.asp) has a Symposium on Canada’s productivity performance, including contributions from Finance Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Statistics Canada, and the Centre for the Study of Living Standards.   Canada’s productivity growth has been weak since 2000 and has practically halted since the pandemic. As a result, Canada’s businesses are less than 70 per cent as productive as their American counterparts—the biggest productivity gap since the War. Why is this? Authors in the symposium suggest a number of explanations: ·      Weak capital investment, especially in ICT ·      A less competitive business environment, particularly in protected sectors such as telecommunications ·      Small and dispersed markets with a large number of small firms ·      A significant number of “zombie firms”, mature firms that are financially under water but are still surviving ·      Significant mismatch between the skills that employers need and the skills of the existing labour force, as well as managers who are less well-educated than their U.S. counterparts. ·      Higher immigration since recent immigrants earn less than Canadian-born workers. ·      Foreign ownership of patents and migration of inventors from Canada   Will this poor performance continue? Looking forward, the authors identify four key structural transformations that will shape Canada’s productivity landscape going forward: ·      Population ageing, which will reduce the share of experienced workers and shift the composition of the economy further towards services. ·      The Green Transition, which could reduce productivity by constraining growth in the high productivity resource sector, but which could also stimulate growth in new, green industries. ·      A realignment of global trade due to geopolitical tensions, which could Canada, given our dependence on trade, but also present opportunities as the U.S. seeks to reorient supply chains away from China. ·      Digitalization and AI, which have the potential to automate tasks performed by many knowledge workers, and so significantly boost productivity.   Whether Canada’s trend productivity performance will improve will depend in large part on how these transformations play out: one thing is for sure however, without a significant increase in productivity growth in Canada, living standards in Canada will stagnate in the years to come. #cdnecon #economics #economy #economicgrowth #productivity