There has been lots of coverage of the diminishing middle-class in the U.S. But it’s happening here in Canada too – and in the Lower Mainland. David Ley and Nicholas Lynch document the changes in this paper from the Cities Centre at the University of Toronto:
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Here’s an illustrative map from the study:
The splintering of middle-income tracts is leading to income gains adjacent to traditional high-income areas (with a few suburban outliers, including South Surrey and Tsawwassen).
But more extensive is the growth of low-income areas that have tumbled out of the middle-income class. They are no longer in the historic poverty core in the central city, but are now south and southeast on the edges of Vancouver and in the suburbs of Burnaby, Richmond, and Surrey.
Question, but isn’t this primarily a map of the desirability of neighbourhoods. There seems to be a movement of middle income people to split either towards the core or the distant suburbs (depending on their thoughts about urbanism and sustainability), raising formerly poor core neighbourhood’s income, while diminishing incomes in aging suburbs. I don’t see that mapping can tell us anything about whether or not the middle class is squeezed…just about where they prefer to live.