A city-region growing apart? : Taking stock of income disparity in greater Montréal, 1970-2005

It is only in the off-Island suburbs that we see a steady increase in the share of tracts in the highest income band, ac- companied by an increase in the share of tracts in the low income band. [...] As in the case of inequality, the relative strength of unions and the importance of the government and public services sector of em- ployment are probably important reasons why the middle-income segment of the population is still very large in Canada. [...] The main variable on which we focus is changes in the average individual incomes (from all sources) of residents aged 15 and over, relative to those of the CMA as a whole, in other words, changes in the ratio of a census tract’s income to the income level for the CMA. [...] We suspect that two major changes to the region’s economy and population beginning in the 1970s may have overshadowed the influence of the onset of the long-term national-scale growth of income inequality that we discussed in the introduction. [...] It is only in the off-Island suburbs that we see a steady increase in the share of tracts in the highest income band, accompanied by an increase in the share of tracts in the low-income band (but not in the lowest income category).