Charles M. Beach

Charles M. Beach’s career as Professor of Economics at Queen’s University spanned four decades—from 1972 through 2012—and continues thereafter as Professor Emeritus. Recognized across Canada as a leading researcher and authority in the areas of income inequality and immigration, he is also highly respected and appreciated for his extraordinary role in mentoring and intellectually supporting generations of economics graduate students. Charles has had a truly profound and significant impact on Canadian economics and public policy throughout his research and teaching career.

Born in Montreal in 1947, Charles obtained his BAH in economics and political science at McGill University in 1968. He went on to earn his PhD in economics at Princeton in 1972, completing his dissertation under the supervision of Ray Fair and Orley Ashenfelter. He joined the Queen`s economics department that year.

Charles’s research has spanned several major areas of applied economics, including econometrics, the distribution of earnings and income, male and female earnings change, unemployment, immigration, and immigrant earnings. Early on, his work on econometric methods with James MacKinnon, and on serial correlation (particularly the Econometrica article: “A Maximum Likelihood Procedure for Regressions with Autocorrelated Disturbances”) has had a lasting influence. In 1984, Charles was co-founder of the Canadian Econometrics Study Group (CESG). Charles’s research in the area of income distribution and inequality has ranged from more theoretical contributions regarding Lorenz curve inference, to empirical analyses of changes in the distribution of income over time, with a particular focus on earnings polarization and the middle class, and the factors impacting changes in earnings inequality in Canada. His 1996 C.D. Howe book (with G. Slotsve), Are We Becoming Two Societies?: Income Polarization and the Middle Class in Canada, had a major impact on policy discourse on the implications of changes in inequality in Canada. Charles’s research on immigrant earnings differentials and earnings mobility, and the impact of alternative design features of the immigration system, has been highly influential in shaping our understanding of both the immigrant labour market experience and the impact of alternative policy options. In 2012, Charles was awarded the Doug Purvis Memorial Prize by the Canadian Economics Association for his C.D. Howe volume (with Chris Worswick and Alan Green), Toward Improving Canada’s Skilled Immigration Policy: An Evaluation Approach.

Recognized and appreciated for his balanced, thoroughly reasoned, evidence-based approach to policy issues, Charles has served as an advisor to governments at the provincial and federal levels, as well as internationally. His expertise has been sought on a broad range of issues spanning immigration policy, income security, youth employment, and older workers. He has served as a member of the Research Advisory Team on Social Security for the Ontario Economic Council (from 1980–83); the Research Advisory Group on Economic Security and Income Distribution for the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada (1983–84); the Technical Advisory Panel on the Self-Sufficiency Project of the Innovations Program at Employment and Immigration Canada; and the Expert Roundtable on Immigration (2012) for the Ontario Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

Charles’s interest and expertise in empirical analysis have proven invaluable in supporting the development of Canada`s major social science databases, including his work as an advisor on the Labour Market Activity Survey, and his significant contributions to the development of the Canadian Longitudinal Demo-Socio-Economic Database project (the Canadian Household Panel Survey), which in turn led to the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID). One of his most lasting achievements was in relation to his efforts to open up access to Statistics Canada micro-data files for researchers in Canada, first as head of the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI) committee under the auspices of the Social Sciences Federation of Canada (from 1993–96), and then as Head of the DLI External Advisory Committee (1996–97) and member of the DLI Steering Committee (1996–97). In 2012, the Canadian Economics Association honoured him with the Mike McCracken Award for Economic Statistics for “theoretical and applied contributions of all sorts that have contributed in important ways to the...