[LINK] "Canada vs. U.S. middle class: What the New York Times missed"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC's Mark Gollom reports on critical reactions in Canada to the recent New York Times report claiming that Canadians are better off than Americans. There are critical qualifications to this story.

An analysis piece in the venerable New York Times declaring that Canada's middle class is now better off than the middle class in the U.S. has certainly generated headlines across this country. But not all analysts are convinced the report tells the whole story.

“It’s one data set and it’s an important data set but we should avoid drawing too many conclusions,” said Mike Moffatt, assistant economics professor at Western University's Richard Ivey School of Business. “There’s a lot it doesn’t look at.”

[. . . S]ome say the Times analysis leaves out some key details. Moffatt said the Times piece takes Canada as a whole and ignores regional disparities in unemployment. Places like Alberta and Saskatchewan, with their booming economies, are boosting the national average, he said.

The 2000 to 2010 time frame also takes into account a period in which the U.S was at the epicentre of a major global recession, "the worst times for the U.S. middle class", said David Macdonald, an economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

As well, Canadian families are among the most indebted with a record high household debt of about 164 per cent of after-tax income, he added.

And while the Canadian middle class may have seen gains from 2000 to 2010, they had the lowest growth rate.

“If you wanted to tell a story: 'Is the middle class falling behind the rest of the population?’ you could do it," Robson said.

But he also added that "you couldn’t tell a story of decline because there were gains right across.”

The whole analysis is worth reading.