Column 2: evidence · does the wage follow the cost
Open data, followed all the way down to one person inside it.
Every piece here starts with a public dataset and ends with a story. The numbers can be checked: any figure set in mono opens its own evidence in a column to the right, so you never have to leave the sentence you are reading to find out whether it is true.
open to work
work
files
Both variables in logs, so the coefficient reads as an elasticity: the percentage the minimum wage moves for each percent the poverty line moves. 238 province-years, 34 provinces, 7 years.
| specification | β | se | se, clustered | t | 95% CI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| province fixed effects | +1.146 | 0.034 | 0.042 | +27.1 | [+1.063, +1.228] |
| province + year fixed effects | −0.262 | 0.206 | 0.218 | −1.2 | [−0.689, +0.164] |
Adding the year effect is the whole result. It removes what happened to the entire country at once, and with it the entire apparent relationship.
the same question asked across provinces instead of within them
| year | n | r | ρ | elasticity | r² |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 34 | +0.557 | +0.510 | +0.646 | 23.4% |
| 2016 | 34 | +0.471 | +0.354 | +0.568 | 16.6% |
| 2017 | 34 | +0.522 | +0.426 | +0.528 | 22.7% |
| 2018 | 34 | +0.531 | +0.452 | +0.519 | 22.9% |
| 2019 | 34 | +0.542 | +0.465 | +0.515 | 24.2% |
| 2020 | 34 | +0.517 | +0.416 | +0.497 | 21.9% |
| 2022 | 34 | +0.496 | +0.412 | +0.493 | 21.1% |
In any single year, cost of living accounts for a median 22.7% of why provincial minimum wages differ. The other ~77% is something else — bargaining, politics, precedent, the previous year’s number plus a formula.