The gap between rich and poor in Canada hasn’t changed in more than two decades, a new report says. Those findings surprised even its authors, a group of economists at TD Bank, given the growing public outcry over income inequality.

“We were very surprised to discover that according to the benchmark used for measuring income inequality there hasn’t been an increase since 1998,” TD chief economist Craig Alexander said in an interview Tuesday.

“So, the natural question is, if we have all these increasing concerns about income inequality, why isn’t the traditional benchmark showing it?”

The report, Income and Income Inequality: A Tale of Two Countries, found income inequality is worse in the U.S. than in Canada and has been rising faster since 1998.

Indeed, after lagging behind the U.S. for years, median household incomes in Canada were 10 per cent higher than in the U.S. — at $55,000 a year — by 2011, the report found. (Median means half of households earned more and half earned less. It’s a more accurate measure than average because it eliminates the extreme highs and lows.)