Cumulative earnings of Black, Chinese, South Asian and White individuals born in Canada

Previous studies of earnings differences across groups of Canadian-born individuals have used cross-sectional data, leaving unanswered the important question of what earnings differences amount to when measured over workers’ lifecycle. Using data from Statistics Canada’s Longitudinal Worker File and the 1996 and 2001 censuses of population, this study fills this gap and quantifies differences in cumulative earnings—the sum of earnings received over a 20-year period—for four different groups of Canadian-born individuals.