Understanding Neighbourhood Income Mixing in Canadian Cities

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The objective of the Indicators of Neighbourhood Income Mixing Project is to develop income-based measures of social mixing designed to measure the diversity of income levels. Income mixing is measured across neighbourhoods and multi-unit apartment buildings. The linkage to Canadian Housing Survey responses offers a new opportunity to examine the relationship between income mixing and policy relevant outcomes, such as dwelling and neighbourhood satisfaction.

3 different measures appeared to be good candidates:

the dissimilarity index
the information theory index
the divergence index

Each measure was then applied using geographically detailed income data derived from tax records.

Findings include:

The divergence index most effectively describes income sorting across and within neighbourhoods.
When it comes to understanding income mixing at the local level, 3 factors appeared to be important. They are the sorting of households:
- across census tracts
- across dwelling types within census tracts
- across apartment buildings in these same census tract-based neighbourhoods
In all Canadian census metropolitan areas, the sorting of households across census tracts represented the main source, among the 3 studied, of income mixing. This means that poor and richer households tend to be concentrated in different neighbourhoods. This implies less income mixing at the CMA level.