Income inequality in Canada has increased over the past 20 years.
The most commonly used measure of income inequality is the Gini index, which is measured on a scale of 0 to 1. Named after the Italian statistician Corrado Gini, the Gini index calculates the extent to which the distribution of income among individuals within a country deviates from an exactly equal distribution:
a Gini index of 0 represents exact equality—that is, every person in the society has the same amount of income
a Gini index of 1 represents total inequality—that is, one person has all the income and the rest of the society has none
Canada reduced inequality in the 1980s, with the Gini index reaching a low of 0.281 in 1989.1 Income inequality rose in the 1990s, but has remained around 0.32 in the 2000s.