[I have not had a chance to update this website in five or six years. My current CV (2023-09-11) is linked below.] I am a PhD candidate in Sociology at McGill University in Montreal and a Sessional Instructor at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. In recent years I have worn many hats, from academic researcher, to development consultant, think tank cofounder, public intellectual and statistics instructor.

I am currently on the academic job market, seeking post-docs and or a tenure track appointment as a university professor. While I've greatly enjoyed and learned a lot from my many experiences, I love research and teaching most.

Check out my Publications and Research pages to learn more about my past and current research. Students and prospective employers can learn about my teaching philosophy and download my course materials on my Teaching page.

My Practice page documents some of my earlier work as a cofounder and first Policy Director at Upstream, and my ongoing work as a publicly engaged researcher. I am available for media comment on a variety of topics related to my research.

2017

Combatting Poverty: Quebec’s Pursuit of a Distinctive Welfare State

With Axel van den Berg, Hicham Raïq, Christine Proulx and Sam Faustman. University of Toronto Press.

2013

Parcours de pauvreté et monoparentalité au Canada et au Québec/Poverty Trajectories and Single Parenthood in Canada and Quebec

With Hicham Raïq. In Sociologie et societies, 45(1): 67-90.

2011

2016

2015

The Business Case for a Living Wage in Saskatoon. 

With Stefan Roddau. Living Wage Saskatoon.

2014

POVERTY COSTS SASKATCHEWAN: A NEW APPROACH TO PROSPERITY FOR ALL

With Keisha Sharp. Saskatoon: Poverty Costs.

VICIOUS CYCLES AND DEVELOPMENT

Poverty is a drag on economies. It damages the poor and incentivizes precautionary behaviour that is damaging to the wider economy. My PhD dissertation uses dynamic panel data methods and leading longitudinal household income data to operationalize these "vicious dynamics" in Canada and the United States. I have found that even in rich countries vicious dynamics threaten the entire population, but that they pose the greatest threat to the least well off.

SOCIAL INVESTMENT IN QUEBEC

Canada is routinely classified as belonging to the group of relatively ungenerous liberal market regimes. But in recent decades there has been a growing divergence between the policies of the province of Quebec, which explicitly aim to match Europe’s most developed welfare states, and the other major provinces, which have tended to follow the North American trend towards neoliberal retrenchment. As a result of a combination of more generous benefits and a successful activation strategy, poverty rates of families in Quebec now compare well with those of the Europe’s most generous welfare states.

POVERTY AND ITS MEASUREMENT IN CANADA

What Statistics Canada call the low income measure (LIM) is the leading income-based measure of poverty in world. It identifies a poverty threshold that 50% of median national income. But in Quebec, a modified LIM is used—one which defines the LIM as a fraction of provincial income. What are the implications of this choice for poverty measurement in Canada?

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND DEVELOPMENT

Experts define social capital as capital that is 'relational'. That is it is something that can be invested in and traded for other forms of capital, and it is something that exists between people. Bill Reimer distinguishes between four kinds of social capital. This research uses big data to explore the impact of "relational capital" on rural communities throughout Canada.

INERTIA IN PUBLIC SPENDING

A number of social commentators accuse the Baby Boomers of hijacking the welfare state. Ironically, it used to be the Baby Boomers that commentators were afraid would end up not receiving their fair share, as their large relative size would lead to economic and social shortages. This research proposes and estimates a model that differentiates between absolute and relative demographic on state expenditure to settle once and for all whether the Baby Boomers have indeed, "run away with the family silver."

RISK AND RETURNS TO SCHOOLING

An extensive literature in economics explores different returns to levels and kinds of schooling for people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Risk, defined operationally as the expected variance of these returns, is an under appreciated dimensions of these returns. When differences in risk are also taken into account, socioeconomics gaps in returns to schooling are even greater than they seem at first glance.

THE BUSINESS CASE FOR A LIVING WAGE

For a generation or more employers have striven to maximize profits by keeping labour costs down. But workers need wages to support themselves and their families, and be fully productive members in modern society. Low wages can lead to poor customer service, high turnover, absenteeism. Might we think of  the living wage as a kind of 'minimum optimal wage'? How can we identify this wage level, and is paying it good for business?

THE COSTS OF POVERTY

According to a number of influential reports—including my own, Poverty Costs Saskatchewan—poverty is expensive. Not only are there good moral reasons to act on poverty, there are also sound economic reasons. But the estimates in these reports draw on largely outdated methods and data. Beyond motivating a call to action, it is unclear to what extent they can be used to inform the particulars of routine policy decision making. How can they be improved?

CHARLES PLANTE

Department of Sociology
1019 - 9 Campus Drive
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A5

1-306-514-0890

charles.plante@usask.ca