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Journal of Geographical Systems
Published in: Journal of Geographical Systems 1/2018

12-07-2017 | Original Article

Pulling apart: new perspectives on the spatial dimensions of neighbourhood income disparities in Canadian cities

Authors: Sébastien Breau, Michael Shin, Nick Burkhart

Published in: Journal of Geographical Systems | Issue 1/2018

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Abstract

The spatial configurations of changes in the distribution of incomes within Canada’s eight largest metropolitan areas are examined using a new approach based on dynamic local indicators of spatial association. These changes are characterized by increasing spatial polarization (or divergence) between higher- and lower-income neighbourhoods in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa-Gatineau, Calgary and Vancouver. Though patterns of spatial polarization are less pronounced in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Quebec City, several lower-income neighbourhoods in these cities nevertheless appear to be losing ground relative to other neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods are typically characterized by higher levels of precarious employment and higher shares of visible minority and recent immigrant populations.
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Footnotes
1
Beveridge (2011) and Florida et al. (2014) provide good overviews of this literature.
 
2
More recently, Florida (2017) uses the term ‘patchwork metropolis’ to explain these dynamics.
 
3
Rey et al. (2011) apply this method to the study of regional income distribution dynamics across US states from 1969 to 2008 while Murray et al. (2012) use it to examine residential housing movement patterns in Franklin County Ohio over the 2004–2006 period.
 
4
In 2011, the mandatory long-form Census was replaced by the voluntary National Household Survey (NHS). Since there is much more variability in the response rates of the voluntary NHS at lower levels of geography and the risk of sampling error is greater, we do not include this latest Survey in our analysis of neighbourhood disparities in order to maintain consistency and comparability over time with previous censuses (see Smith 2015).
 
5
After-tax income is only available in the 2006 Census. While this would be the preferred income concept to use, recent studies have shown that the redistributive effects of the tax transfer system in Canada have faded since the mid-1990s (see Frenette et al. 2009; Banting and Myles 2013).
 
6
Earlier research by Bolton and Breau (2012) has shown that with the exception of Quebec City, these CMAs were amongst those having experienced the largest increase in inequality with Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver leading the way.
 
7
Indeed, Statistics Canada generally discourages changes to CT boundaries in order to maintain data comparability over time.
 
8
Statistics Canada’s naming convention uses a sequence of decimal points for each CT that allows the researcher to re-aggregate the splits to their original CT.
 
9
Note that results using the other measures of spatial association were qualitatively similar.
 
10
We chose Vancouver as an example for two main reasons: (1) as reported elsewhere (see Bolton and Breau 2012; Walks et al. 2016) Vancouver is one of the cities in Canada that experienced the largest increase in income inequality over the 1990s to mid-2000s period and (2) given the number of CTs (n = 297) in the city, the information can be more easily and neatly presented in Moran scatterplots than say for cities such as Toronto and Montreal where the number of CTs is much greater (see Table 1).
 
11
Directional LISAs were calculated using PySAL (see Rey and Anselin, 2007).
 
12
See Rey et al. (2011) and Murray et al. (2012) for more methodological details.
 
13
All measures of inequality were calculated in Stata using Stephen Jenkins’ sumdist and ineqdeco programs (see Stata Technical Bulletin no. 48, 1999).
 
14
We use median total incomes as our measure of central tendency to limit the influence of a few extreme outlier neighbourhood values. When replicated using mean income values, the patterns described below are typically amplified.
 
15
Moreover, Rey et al. (2011) suggest that for studying income dynamics, choosing a representation with 8 circular sectors is optimal as increasing the number of sectors beyond that would not yield much information gains compared to the cost of loss of precision in terms of inferential tests.
 
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Metadata
Title
Pulling apart: new perspectives on the spatial dimensions of neighbourhood income disparities in Canadian cities
Authors
Sébastien Breau
Michael Shin
Nick Burkhart
Publication date
12-07-2017
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
Journal of Geographical Systems / Issue 1/2018
Print ISSN: 1435-5930
Electronic ISSN: 1435-5949
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10109-017-0255-0

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