A new Fraser Institute report finds Canada's top earners saw only a marginal rise in income share between 1982 and 2022
Canada's income inequality has remained largely stable over the past 40 years, according to new research that challenges the widely held perception that the gap between the wealthy and everyone else has grown dramatically.
The Vancouver-based think tank released findings on Thursday showing that once government transfers and progressive taxation are considered, the share of income held by the top 10 per cent of Canadian families rose by just 3.6 per cent between 1982 and 2022. For the top 20 per cent of families, adjusted income share actually fell by 0.3 per cent over the same period.
"Over the span of four decades this country has seen little to no change in income inequality," said Jason Clemens, executive vice president of the Fraser Institute.
The findings form part of an essay titled Definition of Income Matters for Measuring Income Inequality, published as part of a broader Fraser Institute series examining poverty and income distribution in Canada.
How you measure matters
The report draws a sharp distinction between raw employment income and income that has been adjusted for government redistribution.
In 2022, the top 10 per cent of Canadian families received 32.1 per cent of all employment income, a figure that falls to 23.2 per cent once federal and provincial transfers, progressive taxation, and differences in family size are applied.
When looking at employment income alone, the top 10 per cent's share increased by 17.3 per cent between 1982 and 2022. After adjustments, that figure drops to the 3.6 per cent headline result, underscoring just how much methodology shapes the conclusions researchers and policymakers draw about inequality.
This measurement debate is not new to Canadian financial professionals. As previous Fraser Institute research found, top earners in Canada already shoulder a disproportionate share of the country's tax burden; a context the institute argues is frequently overlooked in public discussions about redistribution.
A more nuanced picture of inequality
The data shows that inequality did not move uniformly across the four-decade window.
Levels rose between 1982 and 2010, then declined from 2010 through 2022, leaving the overall position broadly comparable to where it started. The pattern suggests that Canada's tax-and-transfer system has functioned as a meaningful equalising mechanism over time, even as employment income concentration fluctuated.
The question of how governments define and measure inequality has been the subject of sustained discussion among policy researchers. Separate research has similarly suggested that much of Canada's apparent wealth disparity reflects demographic factors such as age, rather than structural inequities in policy design.
The Fraser Institute report arrives at a moment when other data sources have suggested Canada's income divide widened in 2025, pointing to the continued relevance of methodological transparency in this debate. The Fraser Institute's position is that much of what appears to be rising inequality in such analyses disappears once the full effect of the tax-and-transfer system is incorporated.
