Abstract
We use data from the Canadian Censuses (1991–2006) and National Household Survey (2011) to examine how household incomes vary across Aboriginal communities with and without modern agreements. These agreements include self-government, comprehensive land claims and opt-in legislation regarding financial and land management authority. Using a difference-in-difference regression methodology, we find that standalone comprehensive land claims agreements, both with and without associated self government agreements, are associated with income gains for Aboriginal households, primarily through increased labour income. Joint opt-in arrangements combining fiscal and land management authority are associated with smaller income gains. But, other agreement types are not associated with increased household incomes. We also find evidence of continued income growth for CLCAs in the medium term. Finally, we find that income gains—where they are found—are much larger for non-Aboriginal households than for Aboriginal households.
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Notes
We will use the word "Aboriginal" throughout this paper as an adjective describing people who report Aboriginal identity on Census and National Household Survey questionnaires. This includes Metis, First Nations and Inuit respondents.
The federal government department responsible for registered Indians has changed its name several times over the past 2 decades. We will use AANDC, referring to Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, throughout this document. The current name of the department, useful for web searches is Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, but its legal name, used e.g. for contracting, is Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.
One other legal path exists: in 2005, Parliament passed the First Nations Commercial and Industrial Development Act. However, no communities used this Act prior to 2011, so we cannot assess it in this paper. We will henceforth treat the legal paths listed in the main text as the full set of options available to First Nations wishing to change their legal relationship with the Government of Canada.
Brinkhurst and Kessler (2013) investigate how the FNLMA affects land use but not household incomes.
First Nations Commercial and Industrial Development Act (2006) allows the federal government to produce regulations for complex commercial and industrial development projects on reserves https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100033561/1100100033562. However this type of arrangement is too recent for us to assess.
In 2011, the Maa-nulth Final Agreement was reached in British Columbia (B.C.). Two other B.C. First Nations, Yale and Tla’amin (Sliammon), will see their agreements come into effect in 2016.
The Sioux Valley Dakota Nation (Manitoba) Self-Government Agreement came into effect in 2014.
The 2008 Nunavik agreement covers the same CSDs as the earlier 1993 Nunavut agreement, so we don't consider it as a separate standalone CLCA.
The trans-boundary Eeyou Marine Region Land Claims Agreement was signed in 2012. It covers the marine region of Nunavut along the shores of the Hudson Bay.
http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1323350306544/1323350388999, date modified: 2013-07-05, accessed 2015-01-2015.
AANDC, https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1393512745390/1393512934976, Accessed 2015-02-09.
The list of CSDs was drawn from a table showing the Community Well Being Index for each municipality in Canada (https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016649/1100100016651). This table identifies Census Subdivisions as being either First Nations, Inuit, or Other.
Geocode concordance tables are available at: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/concepts/concordances-classifications-eng.htm.
In addition to the results reported in this paper we report results from additional regressions in an online appendix available at these two websites: http://web5.uottawa.ca/www5/pendakur/ and www.sfu.ca/~pendakur.
Appendix Table 1 reports standard errors clustered at the Census Subdivision level. Our major results are all evident in these appendix tables that cluster at the CSD level. They are: (a) that SGA-CLCA's and standalone CLCAs are correlated with higher total income; (b) that non-Aboriginal income gains are larger than Aboriginal income gains; and (c) that labour income is the primary source of income driving income gains. Additionally, as part of our research we investigated individual-level analyses clustered by birthdate and CSD (which accommodates data with the same individuals in successive waves). These standard errors were not more than 10% larger than hetero-robust standard errors, which suggests that the hetero-robust standard errors reported here are not too misleading.
Appendix Table 1 also contains selected coefficients from regressions which include province-year dummies. These allow for the possibility that provincial time-trends are endogenous to treatment. Our major results are evident in this specification as well.
We also provide individual-level regressions analogous to Table 3 in the online Appendix Table 3.
Recall that we include year dummies which would soak up national-level consumer price changes to purchasing power of nominal income in logarithmic regressions.
In online Appendix Table 2, we provide estimates using a stricter subsample of households comprised entirely of members who were in the same CSD 5 years previously. Appendix Table 2 also contains selected coefficients from 3 other sets of regressions: (a) a subsample excluding 1991 Census data; (b) a subsample excluding the 2011 NHS data; and (c) a subsample including only observations in the Territories. Our major results are seen in all these subsamples.
Log regressions do not decompose in the same way, so we do not report them in the main text, deferring those results to online Appendix Table 4.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank John Clement and Diana Lepa from Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada for their comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank Judith Moe for her help on this paper. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Pendakur, K., Pendakur, R. The Effects of Modern Treaties and Opt-In Legislation on Household Incomes in Aboriginal Communities. Soc Indic Res 137, 139–165 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1593-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1593-5