Sogaolu, M. and Sweetman, A. (2025). Low income among Canadian seniors: interactions between immigration status, racial identity and gender. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-07-2024-0296
The Long-run Impacts of Parental Leave Policies on the Motherhood Penalty (Revise and Resubmit)
Abstract: Motherhood affects the earnings of women. But does the type of maternity and parental leave available at the time of first birth matter? This paper addresses this question by using Canadian tax data for the years 2002-2019 and exploiting the 2006 introduction of Québec Parental Insurance Plan, which offered a more generous leave benefit. Using an event-study difference-in-differences approach, this paper finds no significant short-term effect on initial earnings losses. However, there is a more substantial recovery in mothers’ earnings, starting from four years after the birth of their first child, which is largely driven by stronger labour market attachment.
Residency-Based Pension Policies: Implications for Immigrant Seniors’ Employment and Pension Receipt
(with James Stutely, Sergei Filiasov and Arthur Sweetman)
Abstract: Historical increases in immigration to OECD countries are leading to increasing shares of immigrants retiring and receiving public pensions. In Canada, 22.2% of the permanent resident population age 64 and under where immigrants in 2021, but immigrants comprised 30.0% of those aged 65 and over. Yet little is known about immigrants’ retirement patterns, especially given incentives associated with public pension eligibility criteria for those who arrive later in life. For example, in Canada, immigrants must arrive younger than age 26 to obtain full public pension benefits at age 65 so many immigrants might be expected to have increased labour supply to compensate. We document immigrant retirement and public pension take-up patterns, and examine a key constraint associated with public pension eligibility. Paradoxically, we observed that immigrants who arrive in Canada younger than age 40, especially those from the economic immigration class, have higher employment rates in their late fifties than do Canadians at birth. However, immigrants who arrive later in life and have more severe public pension restrictions have lower, not higher, employment rates as seniors. The influence of age and age-at-immigration seem to dominate the incentives from public pensions eligibility. Further, a 10-year minimum residency for any public pension receipt appears to be an important threshold affecting the behaviour of immigrants who arrive late in life.
The Evolution of Childcare Expenditures in Canada (with Elizabeth Dheuy and Kourtney Koebel)
Then and Now: Assessing the Labour Market Disparities between Immigrants and non-immigrants (with Arthur Sweetman)