Pensions and retirement income programs

Description:

'Do I have enough money to retire?' is a question that older workers have been trained to ask themselves as they consider the transition out of the workplace. The financial tally includes employer pension plans, registered savings plans and other investments, as well as entitlement to public benefits' the Canada and Quebec Pension Plan (C/QPP) and Old Age Security/Guaranteed Income Supplement. These resources are balanced against projected spending and other considerations, such as health, family demands and leisure activities. Take-up rates of C/QPP benefits, co-receipt of C/QPP and other benefits, and employment following benefit take-up are examined for taxfilers in their 60s.

Description:

Since they entered the scene, baby boomers have been shaping social and economic structures. Now on the cusp of retirement, they may once again force change on the labour market. Many aspire and can afford to retire relatively young, raising concerns about labour supply and public pension programs. But increasing longevity in good health may persuade some to extend their working life. Trends in pension uptake between ages 50 and 60 and post-pension employment during the 1990s and the first part of this decade offer some clues as to the direction baby boomers may take.

Description:

This table contains 116 series, with data for years 1961-1980 (not all combinations necessarily have data for all years), and was last released on 2007-01-16. This table contains data described by the following dimensions (Not all combinations are available): Geography (14 items: Newfoundland and Labrador; Nova Scotia; New Brunswick; Prince Edward Island ...), Pension plan (2 items: Canada Pension Plan (CPP); Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) ...), Revenue and expenditure (8 items: Total revenue; Total current expenditure; Direct taxes from persons; Investment income ...).

Description:

A registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) constitutes a key component of retirement income planning in Canada. RRSPs allow individuals to save pre-tax dollars in a variety of investment instruments where interest, dividends and capital gains accrue tax free until the funds are withdrawn. However, the taxman will eventually receive his due. RRSPs must be converted into an annuity or a registered retirement income fund (RRIF) in the year the taxpayer turns 69, with prescribed minimum withdrawals starting the following year. RRSP withdrawals already generate significant tax revenues, estimated at over $4 billion in 2002. Although mandatory conversion affects mainly middle- and high-income earners, some low-income savers could have their means-tested social benefits reduced by the boost in income.

Description:

These products present extensive historical, up-to-date and detailed information covering the following topics: Old Age Security programs, registered pension plans (RPPs), registered retirement savings plans (RRSPs), trusteed pension funds, pension adjustment (PA), retirement compensation arrangements (RCAs), Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Quebec Pension Plan (QPP).

These products will be useful for a wide audience, including pension professionals (e.g., employee benefit and investment specialists), employers and policy analysts, as well as educational institutions whose curricula cover these increasingly important programs.

Important note: Please refer to the content note for specifics concerning the information available in each medium.

Description:

The Guaranteed Income Supplement is one of the pillars of Canada's safety net for seniors. Available to those with little or no income other than Old Age Security, it plays an integral part in reducing low income among those 65 and over. However, a misunderstanding of the rules and requirements has meant that some eligible seniors are missing out.

Description:

Settling into retirement involves changes in many aspects of a person's life. Certainly financial adjustments are involved as employment income is replaced by retirement income and spending patterns are altered. People often find they have to make psychological and social adjustments as well. In light of these substantial transformations in lifestyle, retirement counsellors are increasingly encouraging older workers to prepare just as carefully for the non-financial as the financial challenges of retirement. This article draws on the 2002 General Social Survey (GSS) to examine four specific non-financial preparations made prior to leaving the labour force by Canadians who had retired in the previous 10 years (1992 to 2002).

Description:

RRSPs are not always used as a source of income in retirement. This article examines premature RRSP withdrawals between 1993 and 2001, and whether major life events such as marital separation, death of a spouse or job loss affect this behaviour.

Description:

This document presents the results of the Pension Plans in Canada Survey as of January 1, 2003. It gives a brief overview of changes over time in the participation of men and women in registered pension plans, the coverage of the labour force by these plans, membership in defined benefit and defined contribution plans, and total contributions paid into these plans. The document also briefly describes retirement compensation arrangements with an analysis covering the period 1991 to 2001.

Description:

This product contains statistics on registered pension plans at January 1, 2003. The major topic covered are plans and members by areas of employment, jurisdiction of plans registration, type of plan, public and private sector, funding arrangement, employee/employer contribution formula, benefit method and annual contributions made to a registered pension plan.

Statistics on Retirement compensation arrangements are also included and show the number of trusts, the assets, contributions and benefits for 1991 to 2001.

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Trusteed pension funds, market and book value of assets by public and private sector, quarterly.

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Trusteed pension funds, market and book value of assets by foreign and domestic holdings, quarterly.

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Trusteed pension funds, revenues, expenditures and net income, by sector, quarterly.

Description: Individuals with a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP); Tax filers with RRSP contributions by sex, age and income groups (preliminary T1 Family File; T1FF).

Description: This interactive tool allows for custom manipulation and visualization of data sourced from the Pension Satellite Accounts. The interactive tool contains information on different pension types, contributions, investment income, withdrawals and revaluations. By clicking within the tool you will be able to filter through information on various pension estimates.

Description:

Registered pension plans (RPPs), active members and market value of assets by special retirement conditions, sector, type of plan and contributory status.

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Registered pension plans (RPPs), active members and market value of assets by age and service condition for special retirement, sector, type of plan and contributory status.

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Registered pension plans (RPPs), active members and market value of assets by death benefits after retirement, sector, type of plan and contributory status.

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Registered pension plans (RPPs), active members and market value of assets, by jurisdiction of plan registration, sector, type of plan and contributory status.

Description: Registered pension plan (RPPs) and members by jurisdiction of plan registration, sector and type of plan (members by sex).

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Contributions to the Registered Pension Plan (RPP), the Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) and the Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) constitute the third pillar of the Canadian retirement income system. Survey data show that income withdrawn from the retirement system accounted for an increasing share of the total income for elderly Canadians. Assessing the health of the retirement income system is important, especially when it comes to the fund inflows. This paper attempts to see how many Canadian families participated in this pillar of the retirement income system, the amounts contributed to the registered accounts, and their participation and contribution trends over time.

Description:

A Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) is a tax-deductible savings vehicle designed to encourage people to save for their retirement. Contributions are made with pre-tax income, and taxation is deferred to the time when funds are withdrawn, typically in retirement when marginal tax rates are otherwise low, resulting in tax savings over the life cycle. However, RRSP funds do not lock in and there are no early withdrawal penalties by the tax system, which means pre-retirement withdrawals are frequent. This prevalence of pre-retirement RRSP withdrawals raises the question of what reasons, aside from retirement planning, lead people to use these plans. To explore this issue, new research by Statistics Canada and the Retirement and Savings Institute (RSI) at HEC Montréal considers how a person’s financial literacy affects the timing of contributions to and withdrawals from RRSPs.

Description:

Among immigrants who came to Canada recently, some are seniors over the age of 65. This study examines the factors associated with the low-income rate of senior immigrants, with a focus on access to Old Age Security (OAS) and Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) benefits.

Description:

What is the effect of having an employer-sponsored pension plan (EPP) on financial performance in non-workplace investments? This paper offers new insight into this unresolved empirical issue, using administrative data on over 345,000 taxfilers from Canada.

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description:

This paper assesses the extent to which education affects how Canadians save and accumulate wealth for retirement. The paper makes three contributions. First, a descriptive analysis is presented of differences in savings and home values across individuals based on their levels of educational attainment. To this end, new datasets that link survey respondents from the 1991 and 2006 censuses of Canada to their administrative tax records are used. These data provide a unique opportunity to jointly observe education, savings, home values, and a plethora of other factors of relevance. Second, the causal effect of high school completion on savings rates in tax-preferred accounts is estimated, exploiting compulsory schooling reforms in the identification. Third, building on a recent study by Messacar (2015), education is also found to affect how individuals re-optimize their savings rates in response to an automatic change in pension wealth accumulation. The implications of this study’s findings for the “nudge paradigm” in behavioural economics are discussed.

Description:

Data on investment income, Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contributions and charitable donations are derived from income tax returns.The data for the products associated with this release are derived from an early version of the T1 file that Statistics Canada receives from Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

Description:

Data on investment income, Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contributions and charitable donations are derived from income tax returns.The data for the products associated with this release are derived from an early version of the T1 file that Statistics Canada receives from Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

Description:

Data on investment income, Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contributions and charitable donations are derived from income tax returns.The data for the products associated with this release are derived from an early version of the T1 file that Statistics Canada receives from Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

Description: This guide presents an overview of the scope and structure of the Pension Satellite Account as well as the methodology used to derive its stocks and flows estimates.

Description:

This book provides technical documentation of variables, methodologies and extended lists of references used in developing the research findings reported in "New Frontiers of Research on Retirement". It will be used around the world by researchers and teachers, as well as by students preparing theses related to patterns of transition to retirement. This documentation is important because a large part of book is devoted to scientific papers that are based upon Statistics Canada's data and which require substantial innovations of useful concepts and data.

Description:

This guide will be of assistance in understanding the concepts, methodology and data quality of the surveys conducted as well as the data analysed by the Pensions and Wealth Surveys Section of the Income Statistics Division. It covers the following surveys/programs:- Pension Plans in Canada;- Trusteed Pension Funds (Census and Quarterly);- Survey of Financial Security; and- Pension adjustment/registered retirement savings plans data file provided by Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.

Description:

Initial results from the Survey of Financial Security (SFS), which provides information on the net worth of Canadians, were released on March 15 2001, in The daily. The survey collected information on the value of the financial and non-financial assets owned by each family unit and on the amount of their debt.

Statistics Canada is currently refining this initial estimate of net worth by adding to it an estimate of the value of benefits accrued in employer pension plans. This is an important addition to any asset and debt survey as, for many family units, it is likely to be one of the largest assets. With the aging of the population, information on pension accumulations is greatly needed to better understand the financial situation of those nearing retirement. These updated estimates of the Survey of Financial Security will be released in late fall 2001.

The process for estimating the value of employer pension plan benefits is a complex one. This document describes the methodology for estimating that value, for the following groups: a) persons who belonged to an RPP at the time of the survey (referred to as current plan members); b) persons who had previously belonged to an RPP and either left the money in the plan or transferred it to a new plan; c) persons who are receiving RPP benefits.

This methodology was proposed by Hubert Frenken and Michael Cohen. The former has many years of experience with Statistics Canada working with data on employer pension plans; the latter is a principal with the actuarial consulting firm William M. Mercer. Earlier this year, Statistics Canada carried out a public consultation on the proposed methodology. This report includes updates made as a result of feedback received from data users.

Description:

The Survey of Financial Security (SFS) will provide information on the net worth of Canadians. In order to do this, information was collected - in May and June 1999 - on the value of the assets and debts of each of the families or unattached individuals in the sample. The value of one particular asset is not easy to determine, or to estimate. That is the present value of the amount people have accrued in their employer pension plan. These plans are often called registered pension plans (RPP), as they must be registered with Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. Although some RPP members receive estimates of the value of their accrued benefit, in most cases plan members would not know this amount. However, it is likely to be one of the largest assets for many family units. And, as the baby boomers approach retirement, information on their pension accumulations is much needed to better understand their financial readiness for this transition.

The intent of this paper is to: present, for discussion, a methodology for estimating the present value of employer pension plan benefits for the Survey of Financial Security; and to seek feedback on the proposed methodology. This document proposes a methodology for estimating the value of employer pension plan benefits for the following groups:a) persons who belonged to an RPP at the time of the survey (referred to as current plan members); b) persons who had previously belonged to an RPP and either left the money in the plan or transferred it to a new plan; c) persons who are receiving RPP benefits.

Description:

With the release of the first quarter 2000 of the National Income and Expenditure Accounts the sectoring of federal and provincial government, non-autonomous pension plans has changed. These pension plans are now part of the personal sector. Previously these plans were included in either the federal or provincial government sector accounts.

Description:

The intent of this document is to provide an inventory of the surveys, databases, publications, articles and work in progress in Statistics Canada that relate to Canada's retirement income programs. The inventory provides information on publications, output and relevant data elements produced by the surveys and databases. It does not provide an exhaustive description of these data sources, but instead focuses on the information that can be used for purposes of researching/analysing retirement income programs. Some of the information contained does not specifically relate to these programs but might be used as a secondary source when doing research in this area.