When discussing critical public policy issues such as poverty and tax reform, taking a simplistic snapshot view of society is not accurate. Income distribution offers a clear example of ill-formed policy analysis. Failure to incorporate Canadians' income mobility into the discussion results is a misleading depiction of reality at best, and, at worst, can end in damaging public policy. Advocates for an interventionist state argue that the distribution of income as it currently stands is unjust. However, this judgement incorrectly assumes that people are fixed in their income stations.
Canadian data suggests that our income mobility is fairly dynamic.
The Canadian income mobility evidence is even more notable when the analysis is extended to a 5-year period. A total of 45 percent of those families in the bottom two quintiles of earned income moved up at least one quintile over the five-year period of the study. As well, nearly 21 percent of all families moved up one quintile in earnings. Another 8 percent moved up more than one quintile over the five-year period. Evidence from the United States and Britain also shows that being in the low-income bracket isn't permanent for a large majority of people and that individuals move from one level of income to another to a relatively high degree.