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Average Canadian farm incomes tend to be consistently lower than non-farm incomes. Many reasons, including aggregate overproduction are advanced as possible explanations of the above problem. This thesis attempts to determine whether overproduction has been one of the causes of the farm income problem. The bulk of information used in this study was time series data as prepared by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics for the years 1935 to 1965. A model was constructed to test two related hypotheses regarding the presence of excess capital formation and its effect on income and overproduction. The basic findings of the study were that capital formation was not greater than required to produce an aggregate supply of agricultural products equal to aggregate demand. The growth in aggregate supply and aggregate demand were found to be very similar for the period 1935 to 1965, thus indicating that the farm income problem was not aggravated during this era by overproduction. In subsequent analysis, a broader view of the problem was undertaken. To begin, it was established that per capita farm incomes have been growing at a rate similar to that of non-farm incomes. In addition the so called "cost-price squeeze" was not found when the entire 1935 to 1965 period was observed but rather was only found in subperiods. Factor share analysis was used to show that agricultural capital offered returns at least equal to the opportunity costs of capital. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

The basic objectives of this thesis are to build an earnings function for farm incomes of Canadian farm operators, and estimate the rate of return to schooling. It is hypothesized that the low levels of farm income are related to the low investment in education by farm operators. If reasonable estimates of positive returns to schooling are found, they will be useful for policy makers in considering the improvement of the quality of farm operator labour via schooling, as an alternative measure to increase farm income. To achieve the goals of this study, an earnings function is built for the group of entrepreneurs, in particular the farm operators. As a test of functional form a digression is made and a value added approach discussed and utilized as an alternative way of computing the contribution of schooling to farm income. Although both methods yielded significant estimates of the return to schooling comparable to previous studies, the value added approach was found to be a better specified formulation with respect to estimating the productivity of schooling in farm production. The estimate of the marginal product of schooling using the earnings function approach was found to be higher as we concentrated on the full-time farmers. For the value added approach, the estimates differed as we varied the input specification, being higher as we decrease the number of decision variables in the estimating equation. Estimates for both models however have their respective biases and shortcomings attributable mainly to the variables omitted in both specifications. These estimates could be improved with the availability of better specified variables and use of an alternative analytical procedure. In addition to providing strong evidence that schooling is a significant determinant of farm incomes, this study also led to another important conclusion. Using a transformed labour variable in the value added function at the census division level led to an important finding that a similar output-input relationship exists in the agricultural sectors of both the U.S. and Canada. Specifically the relationship was identical for the elasticities of output with respect to labour, with respect to education (schooling), and with respect to the weighted labour variable (product of labour and schooling) values of selected years. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

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This thesis analyses the evolution of informal and formal, private and public income security mechanisms in Canada from the beginning of the colonial period to the present. These programs generally deal with three categories of problems: problems stemming from interruptions of production income due to sickness, accident, premature death of the breadwinner or caused by retirement or unemployment; problems related to non-participation in the labour force such as those encountered by mothers who stay home with their children, children themselves, students, handicapped people and individuals who due to age can no longer enter the labour force; problems related to insufficiency of production income which are usually the problems of low wage earners. This thesis studies mainly the income security programs designed to correct the first two types of economic dependency. / Three main theoretical hypotheses emerge from the economic analysis of the evolution in historical time of income security mechanisms. First, the types of economic dependency which those programs try to deal with are generally collective problems of income distribution or, in other words, income transfers problems; they are not individual problems of saving, neither are they intertemporal income allocation problems. Second, in the field of income security, the institutions of the private sector do not have the economic power to efficiently implement the income security programs desired. Third, the income security collective strategies are deeply influenced by the collective values of Canadian society; therefore, the form that State intervention takes in the field of income security obeys the necessities and the constraints of these values. In addition to the influence of collective values, this thesis discusses the impact of macroeconomic stabilization policies on the evolution of income security programs. / The hypotheses presented in this thesis are original in comparison to the current literature. Indeed an important number of authors consider economic dependency as being principally an individual problem of intertemporal allocation of income and not a collective problem of income distribution. Few of them study the relative efficiency of different economic institutions in providing appropriate income security programs. And finally, many authors ignore the role of collective values.

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The objective of the research was to demonstrate the need, feasibility and relevance of disaggregating by income group the endogenized household sector in the Canadian Input-Output (I-O) model. Personal expenditures and revenue sources were endogenized into Agriculture Canada's I-O open model. Two models were developed, Model 1 and Model 2. Model 1 was a closed model that assumed homogeneity among households. Model 2 relaxed the homogeneity assumption. / The superiority of Model 2 was empirically demonstrated by comparing the economic indicators generated by the models. The indicators of interest were industrial output, GDP at factor cost and the number of paid jobs. A sensitivity analysis investigated the impact of changes in wages and salaries and final demand on the models. Larger differences were found between the models when wages and salaries were stimulated. As hypothesized, Model 1 underestimated the contribution of the lowest wages and salaries group by 19.9 percent and overestimated the impact of the higher wages and salaries group by 19 percent. A $1 million increase in the final demand for agricultural, agri-food and petrochemical products was also simulated. The largest impacts on industrial output occurred when agricultural production was shocked ( $3.8 million). This was followed by agri-food products ($3.2 million) and petrochemical products ( $2.7 million). While differences in the models' estimates were minimal when changes in final demand were simulated, Model 2 generated additional information on the distribution of income. / In conclusion, the results generated by the I-O model with the disaggregated household sector, Model 2, were consistent with budget data and economic theory.

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