Rural and Small Town Canada Analysis Bulletin Catalogue no. 21-006-XIE Vol. 5, No. 7 (December 2004) The rural-urban income gap within provinces: An update to 2000 Vik Singh, Statistics Canada Introduction One objective of public policy is to reduce income disparity in Canada. An earlier bulletin (Singh, 2002) provided an analysis of the rural- urban income gap over the 1980 to 1995 period. The objective of this bulletin is to update those findings with data from 2000. As with the previous bulletin, we will address two questions: • Do the rural regions in each province always have lower average incomes? • Do all the rural regions in Canada show a similar incidence of low incomes or are there any differences across provinces? Highlights ♦ The share of the rural population with low incomes has declined, relative to the share of the urban population with low incomes (due largely to an increase in the incidence of low incomes in urban regions). ♦ Within each province, incomes in rural regions are lower than those in urban regions. ♦ The rural-urban income gap has declined in six provinces. The gap increased in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Saskatchewan. ♦ The rural-urban income gap is largest within Nova Scotia and Manitoba and smallest within New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. ♦ Provinces with above average urban incomes (e.g. Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia) also have above average incomes in their rural regions.