Analysis

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Does a Canadian household spend its money differently than its American counterpart? This article examines the breakdowns in personal consumption, future security and income taxes by family type in the two countries.

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In Canada, there are both similarities and differences in the way urban and rural households spend their income and these patterns have tended to persist over time.

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From family allowance cheques and child tax credits to old age security pensions and guaranteed income supplements, most Canadians benefit from government transfer payments. Using Census data from 1971 to 1986, this article reviews changes in government transfer payments.

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Many families have low incomes, even if members are active in the work force. Who are the "working poor"? This piece reviews the concepts and measures of low income and examines the labour force participation of families below the low income cut-off.

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As the need for pension plans and other support systems increases due to Canada's aging population, the proportion of the working-age population (the main contributor to these systems) is dropping. Will Canada face a dependency crisis in the future? This article examines dependency ratio over the past two decades and notes how Canada compares with other industrialized countries.

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Do the similarities between Canada and the United States extend to patterns of wealth distribution? This study focuses on the wealth of Canadian and American households in 1984. What are the similarities and the differences in the assets held by families? Is wealth more concentrated in one country than in the other? Do Canadians and Americans have different approaches to investment?

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By the end of 1988, $158 billion worth of pension funds were available for investment - more than five times the federal deficit. This study examines how pension funds are invested in both the private and public sector and looks at the rates of returns on these investments between 1978 and 1988.

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As more and more wives join the work force, the dual-earner family has become the norm and a wife who earns more than her husband is no longer a rarity: in 1987, it happened in just under one of five dual-earner families. This study profiles these wives and their husbands by work patterns and earnings, and looks at life-cycle variations.

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 infographic presents some highlights from the 2021 Canadian Income Survey data.

Description: This infographic presents trend information for Canada's official poverty rate, along with a dashboard of 12 indicators to track progress on poverty reduction for Canadians and their households.

Description: This video explains the key concepts of different levels of aggregation of income data such as household and family income; income concepts derived from key income variables such as adjusted income and equivalence scale; and statistics used for income data such as median and average income, quartiles, quintiles, deciles and percentiles.

Description: This video builds on concepts introduced in the other videos on income. It explains key low-income concepts - Market Basket Measure (MBM), Low income measure (LIM) and Low-income cut-offs (LICO) and the indicators associated with these concepts such as the low-income gap and the low-income ratio. These concepts are used in analysis of the economic well-being of the population.

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 infographic uses data from the 2022 Portrait of Canadian Society Survey to examine the impact of rising inflation on the lowest income Canadians. It also uses multiple pre-pandemic data sources to present personal characteristics, family income, net worth levels and poverty rate of Canadians in the bottom income quintile.

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This infographic examines whether the financial expectations of non-retired Canadians were met upon retiring, as captured in Wave 5 (2020) of the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults. In 2014, a group of non-retired Canadians aged 55 or older were asked about their financial expectations for retirement. New data from 2020 reveal how this same group of Canadians-now retired-is doing financially.

Description: This article summarizes findings from an upcoming study in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics that compares absolute intergenerational income mobility rates – the fraction of adult children in the population whose income is higher than that earned by their parents at the same age, in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Finland. This article also discusses the findings of a pilot study in Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth which examines the impact of parental education on the transmission of income between generations using census data from the Intergenerational Income Database.

Description: This discussion paper addresses options and considerations related to two Market Basket Measure (MBM) research agenda items: (1) Updating the other necessities basket component; and (2) the potential creation of a communication services component in the MBM methodology. It also provides an opportunity for the public and stakeholders to provide feedback and comments on the considerations presented in this paper.

Description: There is considerable policy interest in engaging hard-to-reach populations in Canada and integrating them into the tax system so they can receive the benefits intended to support them. Using the Longitudinal Immigration Database, this study provides insights into the tax-filing behaviour of newly landed immigrants and their families over time in Canada.

Description: This study examines the relationship between income and food insecurity, looking at families most at risk, as well as the possible role of assets and debts in food insecurity.

Description: This guide presents information of interest to users of data from the Survey of Household Spending (SHS). It includes descriptions of the survey terms and variables definitions as well as of the survey methodology and data quality. The guide also includes a section describing various examples of estimates that can be drawn from the survey data.

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: Caring for children is among the key functions of families and the larger society. In Canada, the question of affordability issues for families with children has become an increasingly important area of public policy. Also, information on the monetary cost of meeting children’s needs for food, shelter, clothing, health care, and education is important for family planning and budgeting decisions made by people raising children.

Description: This paper builds on an earlier paper, "Delineating remote regions for the Market Basket Measure", outlining an approach for delineating remote Market Basket Measure (MBM) regions by describing a potential methodology for creating remote-region MBM thresholds across Canada’s provinces. The paper then outlines the potential impacts these thresholds would have on provincial poverty estimates. It also provides an opportunity for the public and stakeholders to provide feedback and comments on the methodology.

Description: The Canadian Income Survey (CIS) has introduced improvements to the methods and systems used to produce income estimates with the release of its 2021 reference year estimates. This paper describes the changes and presents the approximate net result of these changes on income estimates using data for 2019 and 2020. The changes described in this paper highlight the ways in which data quality has been improved while producing minimal impact on key CIS estimates and trends.

Description: This study uses data from Canada’s 2021 Census of Population to examine the differences between the poverty rates of racialized groups and the White population. The analysis examines whether these differences recede or persist across generations and the extent to which the sociodemographic composition of racialized groups explains these differences.

Description: This publication brings together and analyzes a wide range of data sources in order to provide information on various aspects of Canadian society, including labour, income, education, social, and demographic issues, that affect the lives of Canadians.

Description: The Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series provides for the circulation of research conducted by Analytical Studies and Modelling Branch staff and collaborators. The Series is intended to stimulate discussion on a variety of topics, such as labour, immigration, education and skills, income mobility, well-being, aging, firm dynamics, productivity, economic transitions, and economic geography. Readers of the Series are encouraged to contact the authors with their comments and suggestions. All the papers in the Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series go through institutional and peer review to ensure that they conform to Statistics Canada's mandate as a governmental statistical agency and adhere to generally accepted standards of good professional practice.

Description: This series provides detailed documentation on income developments, including survey design issues, data quality evaluation and exploratory research.

Description: This series provides detailed documentation on the issues, concepts, methodology, data quality and other relevant research related to household expenditures from the Survey of Household Spending, the Homeowner Repair and Renovation Survey and the Food Expenditure Survey.

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The documents in this collection are based on data from the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults, a survey that examines a variety of topics on the well-being of Canadians and measures the effect of changes in certain areas on people's lives. The survey covers several topics, such as jobs, health, adult education and training, income and earnings, as well as the family dynamic. Reports on the survey content, concepts, methodology and data quality are also available.

Description: In 2018, Statistics Canada will celebrate its 100th anniversary. As we count down to this important milestone, we would like to use our data to highlight some of the sweeping changes that have had a lasting impact on Canadian society and economy.

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This topic presents data on the income of individuals, families, and households of Canada for the year 2010, including the composition of income, earnings and low-income prevalence data. The data also include the family and household incomes of Canadians by characteristics, family structure, household type and geography, as well as the total income and earnings levels of certain population groups (e.g., immigrants). The composition of income includes market income and income from government sources, and presents detailed components.

This topic also presents data on dwelling characteristics, including number of rooms and bedrooms, condition of dwelling, period of construction, condominium status, value of dwelling, and structural type of dwelling. Data on households are also presented, including household maintainer, housing tenure, housing subsidy, housing suitability and shelter costs.

Analytical products

Two analytical documents provide analysis on the key findings in the data, and are complemented with the short articles found in NHS in Brief and the data in the NHS Focus on Geography Series.

Data products

The NHS Profile is one data product that provides a statistical overview of user selected geographic areas based on several detailed variables and/or groups of variables. Other data products include data tables which represent a series of cross tabulations ranging in complexity and are available for various levels of geography.

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The Canadian Income Survey (CIS) is a cross-sectional survey developed to assess the economic well-being of individuals and families in Canada. It provides a portrait of the income and income sources of Canadians, with their individual and household characteristics.

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Presented in almanac style, the 2012 Canada Year Book contains more than 500 pages of tables, charts and succinct analytical articles on every major area of Statistics Canada's expertise. The Canada Year Book is the premier reference on the social and economic life of Canada and its citizens.

Description: This publication brings together and analyzes a wide range of labour and income data. Topics include youth in the labour market, pensions and retirement, work arrangements, education and training, and trends in family income. One section highlights new products, surveys, research projects and conferences. Another section uses charts and text to describe a variety of subjects related to labour and income. Each winter print issue contains an index of all published articles.

To find the latest updates on labour market and household issues such as gambling, minimum wage, retirement and unionization, please visit: Topics of interest on labour and income.