Short-Term Relocation Versus Long-Term Migration: Measuring Income Transfers by Inter-provincial Employees Across Canadian Provinces

Inter-provincial employees (IPEs), or individuals who work in one province and reside in another, have emerged as the main source for inter-provincial worker mobility within Canada, with their numbers far exceeding the number of inter-provincial migrants (IPMs, or individuals who permanently relocate from one province to another) on a yearly basis. Given the magnitude of the movement of IPEs, considerable amounts of income will be earned in one location and transported back to the place of residence. This is in contrast to IPMs, where income is earned and kept in the same place of residence/work. This chapter provides an estimate of the amount of income that is transferred across space by IPEs. Income-based versions of demographic effectiveness (Plane, Int J Popul Geogr 5:195–212, 1999) are applied to evaluate the movement of earned income in the Canadian context among inter-provincial employees, providing an estimate of the amount of income moved across space. Results illustrate the potential scale of income moved across space and the role of IPEs in redistributing income.