Financial expectations of retired Canadians
Released: 2022-12-13
In 2014, a group of non-retired Canadians were asked about their financial expectations for retirement. New data from the fifth wave (2020) of the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults (LISA) reveals how this same group of Canadians—now retired—is doing financially. In 2014, just over two-thirds (67.5%) of these people expected their retirement income to be adequate or more than adequate to comfortably maintain their standard of living. Now retired in 2020, 81.6% found that their retirement income was sufficient to comfortably cover their living expenses.
Similar results were observed for both men and women. In 2014, approximately two-thirds of non-retired men (68.5%) and women (66.4%) expected an adequate or more than adequate retirement income. In 2020, 82.2% of men and 81.0% of women declared their retirement income to be sufficient in comfortably covering their living expenses.
Individuals who belonged to a racialized group, who had ever had a disability or who had a high school education or less were not as optimistic about their expected retirement income. Of individuals belonging to a racialized group, two in five (40.4%) did not expect their retirement income to be adequate to maintain their pre-retirement standard of living. However, once retired, 56.0% of people in this group found that their retirement income was sufficient. In comparison, 83.8% of people in the non-racialized group found their retirement income to be sufficient. Meanwhile, nearly three-quarters of people who had ever had a disability (72.4%) and people who had a high school education or less (73.5%) found that their retirement income comfortably covered their living expenses. These proportions surpassed their expectations by 17.1 and 23.2 percentage points, respectively.
In total, 39.9% of people who had ever had a disability and 30.3% of people who had a high school education or less predicted that their primary source of retirement income would be from a workplace pension plan or their personal retirement savings. In 2020, 44.2% of people who had ever had a disability and 41.2% of people who had a high school education or less received income from a workplace pension plan or a retirement savings plan. These rates were lower than those for people who had no disability (54.7%) or who had a postsecondary education (58.0%).
Additional details are available in today's infographic release that uses LISA data to examine the financial expectations and outcomes of retired Canadians. The microdata file for the fifth wave (2020) of the LISA will also be available at Statistics Canada's research data centres.
Note to readers
The Longitudinal and International Study of Adults (LISA) is a longitudinal survey that collects information from respondents across Canada on their jobs, education, health and family. Since 2012, the same people have been interviewed every two years to see how changes in work, education and health have affected their lives. With LISA, researchers can now better assess the long-term benefits of postsecondary education, or how job loss or poor health can affect other aspects of people's lives.
New theme content added in 2020 includes questions about homelessness and work schedules.
Products
The infographic "Income in retirement: Expectations versus reality" is now available as part of the series Statistics Canada – Infographics (11-627-M).
Contact information
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).
- Date modified: