Black Canadians and black Americans: racial income inequality in comparative perspective

Abstract

Using census data, we compare the economic status of blacks and whites in two neighbouring countries – the USA and Canada – examining the effects of international migration of people of colour upon systems of racial hierarchy. At first impression, the racial income gap is markedly smaller in Canada than in the USA. However, this is largely due to the relative sizes of first-, second- and third-plus-generation immigrants in each country. Once this is taken into account, we find that racial income and wage gaps are quite similar in the two countries, raising the puzzle of why nations with such divergent institutional histories produce similar levels of racial inequality.

Keywords:

• Racial inequality
• Canadian multiculturalism
• United States
• second generation
• economic mobility
• census

Notes

1. When a dependent variable in a regression model is logged, but the predictor variables are not logged, the coefficients for predictors are often interpreted as the percentage change in Y per unit increase in X. However, this approximation is only accurate for coefficients under 0.25 and becomes increasingly inaccurate for larger coefficients. To obtain an exact percentage for a logged predictor with coefficient ‘b’ we calculated the percentage as Y = 100*(Exponential(b) − 1).

2. These estimates were provided by Prof. Barry Edmonston of the Population Research Group, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, British Columbia.