Comparative research documents substantial education- and income-based class gaps in parent spending on children’s education, with important repercussions for the perpetuation of intergenerational (dis)advantage. Spurred by higher levels of income inequality and associated economic transformations, some speculate these gaps may have widened, as parents feel intensified pressure to best position their children in increasingly competitive labour markets. We examine the size and evolution—over time and in response to higher inequality—of these class gaps in the Canadian provinces, a context where we propose competitive pressures may be muted by the country’s relatively unstratified post-secondary education system. Exploiting provincial and temporal variation in Statistics Canada’s Survey of Household Spending (2006–2019), we show that more highly educated parents, and to a lesser extent high-income ones, place distinct emphasis on education spending. However, we find limited evidence of changes in these spending patterns in response to income inequality or over time.
