Minority Earnings in Canada 1970-2005.

We estimate earnings equations for Canadian-born female and male workers to assess the size of the white-Aboriginal and white minority earnings differentials in Canada over the period 1971 to 2006.  We use the main bases of 7 Censuses of Canada, yielding millions of observations in each year.  This allows us to focus on the relatively small populations of Canadian-born visible minorities and Aboriginals.  The large samples allow for several extensions to previous research: (1) we treat 12 large Canadian metropolitan areas as local labour markets with separate regression equations and (2) we examine differences across 36 ethnic groups within our broad categories of white, Aboriginal and visible minority.

            Generally, we find a pattern of stable or narrowing earnings differentials through the seventies, stability through the eighties and enlargement of the earnings differentials between 1991 and 1996.  The last 10 years has seen some improvement in disparity for Aboriginal men and women, but stasis for visible minorities born in Canada.  Aboriginal men continue to face daunting earnings penalties (-35%) while visible minority men face penalties of about -16% after controlling for personal characteristics.  Differentials for women are smaller (around -5%).  There are some important differences by city. Generally, for visible minority men and women, west is best.  For aboriginal men and women, west is worse.