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Description: This study uses administrative tax data and the Survey of Financial Security to explore trends in the number and characteristics of high-income Canadians, as well as their wealth and effective income tax rates, from 1982 to 2004. The paper uses a range of thresholds to delineate high income and emphasizes statistics on the top 5%, 1%, 0.1% and 0.01% of tax filers.

The study found that an individual income of $89,000 was needed to be counted among the top 5% if income recipients in 2004. A family income of $154,000 would place one in the top 5% of families. The growth in incomes at the high end has been quite rapid while incomes of the majority of the population remained stable. Compared with the U.S., Canada had significantly fewer high-income recipients in 2004, and their incomes were considerably less. Higher-income individuals tend to be middle aged married males that live in the larger urban centres. While women have made up a larger portion on the top 5% of tax filers since 1982, they have not made gains in the very highest income groups. High income Canadians have roughly the same share of total wealth as they do of total income.

High income Canadians, in line with an increasing share of total income, have been paying an increasing share of total personal income taxes. Their share of total income increased from 21% to 25% between 1992 and 2004 while their share of income taxes paid increased from 30% to 36%. At the same time their effective tax rate dropped from 29% to 27%. Thus despite lower tax rates the increase in incomes was large enough, when combined with the progressive tax system, to result in an increased share of total taxes paid by high income Canadians. There is considerable heterogeneity in effective tax rates at the individual level with some high income individuals facing an effective tax rate of over 45%, while some pay as little as 10%. The proportion of tax filers, across the income distribution, who pay zero taxes decreased between 1992 and 2004.

Description: This research examines the characteristics of non-elderly unattached Canadians who experience persistent low income and their transition patterns into and out of low income. It also examines the factors associated with increased risk of persistent low income.

The study found that unattached individuals aged 45 to 64, the activity limited, the not employed, visible minorities, and high school leavers all faced a higher rate of the most persistent low income (6 years out 6). Family formation reduced the incidence and persistence of low income.

Statistical analyses showed that among working-aged unattached individuals, those who faced the greatest risks of the most persistent low income included the unemployed and those who had reported limitations to work. Individuals also at great risk were those who had not completed high school, those who were aged 45 to 64, or those whose unattached status remained unchanged over the six-year study period.

Description: The Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) is a longitudinal survey which collects information related to the standard of living of individuals and their families. By interviewing the same people over a period of six years, changes and the causes of these changes can be monitored.

A preliminary interview of background information is collected for all respondents aged 16 and over, who enter the SLID sample. Preliminary interviews are conducted for new household members during their first labour and income interview after they join the household. A labour and income interview is collected each year for all respondents 16 years of age and over.

The purpose of this document is to present the questions, possible responses and question flows for the 2006 preliminary, labour and income questionnaire (for the 2005 reference year).

Description: The Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) conducts an annual labour and income interview in January. The data are collected using computer-assisted interviewing; thus there are no paper questionnaires required for data collection. The questions, responses and interview flow for labour and income are documented in another SLID research paper. This document presents the information for the 2006 entry and exit portions of the labour and income interview (for the 2005 reference year).

The entry exit component consists of five separate modules. The entry module is the first set of data collected. It is information collected to update the place of residence, housing conditions and expenses, as well as the household composition. For each person identified in entry, the demographics module collects (or updates) the person's name, date of birth, sex and marital status. Then the relationships module identifies (or updates) the relationship between each respondent and every other household member. The exit module includes questions on who to contact for the next interview and the names, phone numbers and addresses of two contacts to be used only if future tracing of respondents is required. An overview of the tracing component is also included in this document.

Description: The Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) is a longitudinal survey initiated in 1993. The survey was designed to measure changes in the economic well-being of Canadians as well as the factors affecting these changes.

Sample surveys are subject to errors. As with all surveys conducted at Statistics Canada, considerable time and effort is taken to control such errors at every stage of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics. Nonetheless errors do occur. It is the policy at Statistics Canada to furnish users with measures of data quality so that the user is able to interpret the data properly. This report summarizes a set of quality measures that has been produced in an attempt to describe the overall quality of SLID data. Among the measures included in the report are sample composition and attrition rates, sampling errors, coverage errors in the form of slippage rates, response rates, tax permission and tax linkage rates, and imputation rates.

Description: Low income cut-offs (LICOs) are income thresholds, determined by analysing family expenditure data, below which families will devote a larger share of income to the necessities of food, shelter and clothing than the average family would. To reflect differences in the costs of necessities among different community and family sizes, LICOs are defined for five categories of community size and seven of family size.

Low income Measures (LIMs), on the other hand, are strictly relative measures of low income, set at 50% of adjusted median family income. These measures are categorized according to the number of adults and children present in families, reflecting the economies of scale inherent in family size and composition. This publication incorporates a detailed description of the methods used to arrive at both measurements. It also explains how base years are defined and how LICOs are updated using the Consumer Price Index.

Description:

Discussions related to work hours are typically driven by cross-sectional studies. Much less is known about the longitudinal perspective and the persistence of long hours or periods of underemployment. The annual hours of employees are examined over a five-year period to determine what proportion experience variable work years and how their well-being is affected.

Description:

The GST (goods and services tax) provided $30.6 billion to the federal government in 2003. Of this, $2.9 billion was paid back as a credit to taxfilers aged 16 and older based on their income. How many individuals receive the GST credit, and who are they? Does this credit help to redistribute income?

Description:

Over the last four decades, the dramatic increase in dual-earner couples has also engendered an increase in wives as primary breadwinners. These women tend to be older and more educated than women who are secondary earners, and they are more frequently found in managerial and professional occupations. The article examines the earnings and characteristics of primary- and secondary-earner spouses.

Description:

This paper summarizes the data available from SLID on housing characteristics and shelter costs, with a special focus on the imputation methods used for this data. From 1994 to 2001, the survey covered only a few housing characteristics, primarily ownership status and dwelling type. In 2002, with the start of sponsorship from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), several other characteristics and detailed shelter costs were added to the survey. Several imputation methods were also introduced at that time, in order to replace missing values due to survey non-response and to provide utility costs, which contribute to total shelter costs. These methods take advantage of SLID's longitudinal design and also use data from other sources such as the Labour Force Survey and the Census. In June 2006, further improvements in the imputation methods were introduced for 2004 and applied to past years in a historical revision. This report also documents that revision.

Description:

This report presents low income data on an after-tax income concept, including data on how far family incomes are from the LICO or LIM on an after-tax basis (or income deficiency/surplus, popularly referred to as the "poverty gap"). The after-tax low income data are also compared with results from the main or perferred LICO concept.

Description:

Documentation to accompany public-use microdata files. Contains a detailed description of the survey design, content and methods, as well as the record layout and the data dictionary.

Description:

The gender gap in hourly wages narrowed between the late 1980s and the late 2000s. This article analyses the narrowing wage gap according to the changing characteristics of men and women in paid work, the changes in pay received for those characteristics, and the extent to which who works in each period affects the results.

Description:

During the recent employment downturn, self-employment was one source of employment growth. This article uses data from the Labour Force Survey to examine the sources and characteristics of the recent increase in self-employment, the dynamics of entry into and exit out of self-employment, and to assess the extent to which those who lost paid jobs early in the recession might account for the subsequent surge in self-employment.

Description:

Finding a job related to one's studies is a key factor for many job seekers. Closely matching individual and job skills can be beneficial for both employees and employers. This study uses the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics to estimate the wage premium for a close job-to-education match among men and women who graduated from universities and community colleges while controlling for field of study and demographic factors.

Description:

Layoffs displace a large number of workers each year, and they are known to have lasting effects on individuals' standard of living. This study conducts a comparative analysis of the risk of layoff between the 1990s and 2000s, seeking to identify the factors associated with this risk. It then examines the duration of jobless spells as well as various characteristics of the lost jobs and subsequent jobs, such as the wage, union coverage and participation in a retirement plan.

Description:

In order to provide a holographic or complete picture of low income, Statistics Canada uses three complementary low income lines: the Low Income Cut-offs (LICOs), the Low Income Measures (LIMs) and the Market Basket Measure (MBM). While the first two lines were developed by Statistics Canada, the MBM is based on concepts developed by Human Resources and Skill Development Canada. Though these measures differ from one another, they give a generally consistent picture of low income status over time. None of these measures is the best. Each contributes its own perspective and its own strengths to the study of low income, so that cumulatively, the three provide a better understanding of the phenomenon of low income as a whole. These measures are not measures of poverty, but strictly measures of low income.

Description:

Statistics Canada introduced its Low Income Measure (LIM) in 1991 as a complement to its Low Income Cut-Offs (LICOs). The Low Income Measure (LIM) is a dollar threshold that delineates low-income in relation to the median income and different versions of this measure are in wide use internationally. Over the intervening 25 years there have been a number of useful methodological and conceptual developments in the area of low income measurement. To make the Canadian LIM methodology consistent with international norms and practices, a revision of the Statistics Canada LIM methodology appears desirable.

This paper describes three modifications to the LIM that Statistics Canada plans to introduce in 2010: replacing the economic family by household; replacing the current LIM equivalence scale by the square root of household size; and taking household size into consideration in determining the low-income thresholds. The paper explains the rationale behind each modification and demonstrates the impacts the revisions will have on low-income statistics in comparison with those under the existing LIM. Overall the revisions do not have any significant effect on broad historic trends in low-income statistics in Canada. However, compared to the existing LIM the revised LIM produces lower estimates of low-income incidence for certain groups of individuals such as unattached non-elderly individuals.

Description:

This study assesses the existing LICO, LIM, and MBM lines, together with a fixed LIM, by using several distribution sensitive indexes. We found that the low income lines tracked each other well in the long-run. But, in the short-run, they often behaved differently. The same was observed when examining different indexes under the same line. In the long-run, the low income rate, gap, and severity indexes all moved in the same direction. However in the short-run, they sometimes varied in opposite directions, or in the same direction with different magnitudes, suggesting that a single line or index can be misleading in some circumstances.

Description:

International comparisons show that the percentage of both college- and university-educated workers who earn less than half of the median employment income is higher than in Canada than in most, if not all, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Data from Statistics Canada's Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) show that 18% of university-educated adults and 23% of college-educated adults aged 25 to 64 in Canada earned less than half the national median employment income in 2006.

This study uses descriptive statistics and logistic regression techniques in order to shed light on the type of highly educated worker who is likely to fall into lower employment earnings, taking into account a range of characteristics, including age, sex, field of study, occupation and industry. While all of the workers in the study population had non-zero employment earnings, many of them reported an activity other than working as their main activity for the year, a key factor in explaining their low-earnings situation. Other factors associated with having a college or university education while also having low employment earnings include being self-employed, working in certain occupations or industries and being female.

Description:

This report compares the aggregate income estimates as published by four different statistical programs. The System of National Accounts provides a portrait of economic activity at the macro economic level. The three other programs considered generate data from a micro-economic perspective: two are survey based (Census of Population and Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics) and the third derives all its results from administrative data (Annual Estimates for Census Families and Individuals). A review of the conceptual differences across the sources is followed by a discussion of coverage issues and processing discrepancies that might influence estimates. Aggregate income estimates with adjustments where possible to account for known conceptual differences are compared. Even allowing for statistical variability, some reconciliation issues remain. These are sometimes are explained by the use of different methodologies or data gathering instruments but they sometimes also remain unexplained.

Description:

The student borrowing rate among postsecondary graduates increased between 1995 and 2005, with borrowers differing little from non-borrowers in terms of employment rates and total personal income. However, borrowers were less likely to have savings or investments, or own their own homes. Total debt for borrower and non-borrower graduates age 20 to 29 was similar, while borrowers had lower assets and net worth than non-borrowers.

Description:

In May 2004 the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) collected data on income from both its third and fourth panels. Panel 3 was in its fifth year of collection and panel 4 was in its second year.

Respondents had the option of answering income questions in an interview, or of giving permission to Statistics Canada to allow SLID to use the information on their income tax return.

The purpose of this document is to present the questions, possible responses and question flows for the 2004 Income questionnaire (for the 2003 reference year).

Description:

This paper describes the changes made to the structure of geography information on SLID from reference year 1999 onwards. It goes into reasons for changing to the 2001 Census-based geography, shows how the overlap between the 1991 and 2001 Census-based concepts are handled, provides detail on how the geographic concepts are implemented, discusses a new imputation procedure and finishes with an illustration of the impact of these changes on selected tables.

Description:

This document presents information about the entry-exit portion of the annual labour and the income interviews of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID).

Description:

This document outlines the structure of the January 2003 labour interview of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID), including question wording, possible responses and flows of questions.

Description:

This paper describes the collection method and content of the 2003 income interview of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID). Respondents also had the option of giving Statistics Canada permission to use the information on their income tax return.

Description:

This document presents the questions, possible responses and question flows for the 2003 preliminary questionnaire of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID).

Description:

This paper presents the information for the Entry Exit portion of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) Income interview.

Description:

This document presents the information for the Entry Exit portion of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) Labour interview.

Description:

This document presents the questions, question flows and possible responses for the 2002 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) preliminary questionnaire.

Description:

This document outlines the structure of the January 2002 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) labour interview. It includes the wording of questions, the flow of questions and possible responses.