Pay Up, Folks

I came across some info recently that was a revelation to me, and may be to you, also. I tip my hat to Juno News, to which I subscribe, for publishing the article that put me onto this. I will add that Juno News is not really a news site, it contains mostly opinions and the occasional polemic. However, I subscribe (it is not expensive) because it covers things the Globe and Mail will not. Like this. The Juno article, dated July 10, is titled –

Provincial politicians take about twice as much pay as their American counterparts: Study

The ‘study’ referred to was done by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a nonprofit org, and I went to that org’s website and – with some difficulty – found said study. What I write below comes from that.

The key finding, as the title indicates, is in this quote from the study (all figures below are given in Canadian dollars, and refer to annual salaries):

The median salary for provincial politicians in Canada is more than double what the median American representative makes, at $113,637 and $45,002 respectively.

Those of us living in Ontario will enjoy this quote:

Ontario MPPs draw the highest salary among Canadian provincial politicians at $157,350. Legislators from only three of the United States’ 50 states take a higher salary than Ontario MPPs — New York, California and Pennsylvania. However, these states are outliers within the U.S.

As a less than talented applied statistician, I have to point out that there is a highly varied distribution of salaries in both these countries, and comparing distributions is not a straightforward thing. Here is yet another way to look at it, again from the study:

Only 18 per cent of American representatives make over $100,000 CAD while 70 per cent of Canada’s provincial politicians earn more than $100,000.

The study also goes on to look at the GDP per capita of these subnational jurisdictions in comparison to what their legislators earn. Another quote:

North Dakota pays its politicians $10,193 and is a wealthier state on a per-person basis than every Canadian province. Of the 19 American states with a higher GDP per capita than all Canadian provinces, 13 of those states pay their representatives less than any Canadian province.

New Mexico, the only subnational jurisdiction across Canada and the United States that doesn’t pay its representatives, is wealthier than eight of 10 Canadian provinces.

In that last sentence, ‘wealthier’ means ‘has higher GDP/cap’.

Readers will know how dubious I am of articles of the ‘studies show’ type. However, while the Juno News article provides little reason to be more confident in the findings of this study than of any other such, the CTF study itself does a good job in its final chapter, titled Methodological Notes, of laying out where its data comes from and its exact nature. It looks carefully done.

A few things I am led to wonder further about after reading this –

It appears this study leaves out US governors and Canadian premiers. My expectation is that the comparison would be similar, but it would be interesting to see. The roles are different, of course, Canadian premiers are members of the legislature, US governors are not.

Similarly, I wonder how municipal councillor and mayoral pay differs across the two countries. Figuring that out would be a much bigger task, of course.

The study points out that in general, Canadian politicians are paid more than in the US while Canadian provinces collect more in taxes from their residents than do US states. Not a surprise, and the underlying reason to me is that Canadians, by history and inclination, are more prone to expect their government(s) to take care of things than are Americans.

There is one possibly important aspect of this that is entirely missing from the study. No job can be characterized wholly by its attached salary. So – for how long do US state legislatures typically meet each year, compared to Canadian? How do the fringe benefits (pension, insurance, expense accounts, etc) that the legislators get in the two countries compare? My strong expectation is that those are generally better in Canada, also – high salary jobs typically come with better benefits, too – but we don’t really know.

I suppose the key message the CTF is trying to deliver is that paying government office-holders more does not imply better results for citizens.

Point made, point taken.