Analysis

Income data for Canadian tax filers shed light on the distribution of income in 2018. This infographic illuminates selected characteristics of the top 1% of tax filers in Canada that year, including information on age, gender, and geographic location. The top 1% of tax filers is defined as the 1% of tax filers with the highest total incomes when ranked nationally. These estimates are for a pre-pandemic period and do not reflect any impacts of COVID-19. However, they do provide a baseline for analysing changes to the top of the income distribution during the pandemic period, once those data become available.

Throughout much of the last century, older couples faced only one retirement decision -- the husband's. However, the dramatic rise and sustained participation of women in the paid labour force since the 1970s transformed the retirement transitions of married couples; increasingly, couples had to make two decisions and balance the preferences and constraints of partners who both made substantial contributions to household income. This article looks at the extent to which spouses synchronize the timing of their retirements, the factors associated with taking one or another pathway into retirement and changes in patterns of retirement through the 1990s.

Prime-aged couples experienced a moderate decline in RPP coverage over the last two decades, as the substantial growth in wives labour market participation and the slight increase in their RPP coverage only partially offset a substantial decline in husbands coverage. On average, retirement savings of families rose over the last two decades, but the distribution became more unequal. To a large extent, the uneven growth in retirement savings mirrors the sharp increase in family earnings inequality since the early 1980s.

Using tax data, this paper examines earnings instability among lone parents, unattached individuals, and two-parent families over the past two decades. When income tax effects and main sources of income were considered, no strong evidence of a widespread increase in instability was found. Government transfers play a particularly important role in reducing the earnings instability of lone mothers and unattached individuals

Income data for Canadian tax filers shed light on the distribution of income in 2018. This infographic illuminates selected characteristics of the top 1% of tax filers in Canada that year, including information on age, gender, and geographic location. The top 1% of tax filers is defined as the 1% of tax filers with the highest total incomes when ranked nationally. These estimates are for a pre-pandemic period and do not reflect any impacts of COVID-19. However, they do provide a baseline for analysing changes to the top of the income distribution during the pandemic period, once those data become available.

Throughout much of the last century, older couples faced only one retirement decision -- the husband's. However, the dramatic rise and sustained participation of women in the paid labour force since the 1970s transformed the retirement transitions of married couples; increasingly, couples had to make two decisions and balance the preferences and constraints of partners who both made substantial contributions to household income. This article looks at the extent to which spouses synchronize the timing of their retirements, the factors associated with taking one or another pathway into retirement and changes in patterns of retirement through the 1990s.

Prime-aged couples experienced a moderate decline in RPP coverage over the last two decades, as the substantial growth in wives labour market participation and the slight increase in their RPP coverage only partially offset a substantial decline in husbands coverage. On average, retirement savings of families rose over the last two decades, but the distribution became more unequal. To a large extent, the uneven growth in retirement savings mirrors the sharp increase in family earnings inequality since the early 1980s.

Using tax data, this paper examines earnings instability among lone parents, unattached individuals, and two-parent families over the past two decades. When income tax effects and main sources of income were considered, no strong evidence of a widespread increase in instability was found. Government transfers play a particularly important role in reducing the earnings instability of lone mothers and unattached individuals