Revisions to 2006 to 2011 income data
Revisions to survey estimates
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Family income
The revisions to the SLID estimates result in only a small change in median family income over the 2006 to 2011 period. Overall, median market income, government transfers and after-tax income of economic families and persons not in an economic family showed no significant difference between the unrevised and revised results (Table 2).
Some differences were observed for specific family types, but these are generally small changes and do not affect the overall conclusion that median results changed little as a result of the revision.
Low income
Statistics that measure low income are more affected by the revision than other income statistics. Table 3 summarizes changes to low-income rates based on the after-tax low income measure (LIM-AT), the after-tax low income cut-offs (LICO-AT) and the market basket measure (MBM).
In comparing unrevised to revised low-income estimates, revised estimates are virtually all higher than unrevised estimates in both 2006 and 2011. The low-income rate based on the LIM-AT is revised from 12.4% to 13.4% in 2006 and from 12.6% to 13.3% in 2011. Revisions using the LICO-AT are slightly larger, increasing from 10.3% to 11.5% in 2006 and from 8.8% to 9.6% in 2011. Rates based on the MBM increase from 11.7% to 12.7% in 2006 and from 12.0% to 12.6% in 2011. Relative to their initial value, the magnitude of the revisions are fairly uniform for males and females, across age groups as well as for persons in economic families or those not in economic families.
Table 3 also shows results for 2012 and 2013 from CIS. For almost all domains, the change in low-income rates between 2011 and 2012 was insignificant following the revision.
Changes by province and for selected CMAs are summarized in Table 4. Upward revisions to the low-income rates were larger in Ontario and Toronto in both 2006 and 2011. For example, in Toronto, the 2011 low-income rate based on the LIM-AT was revised upwards from 10.7% to 13.9%. Low income was also revised upwards in British Columbia in 2006 (by 1.5 percentage points (p.p.) based on the LIM-AT), associated with a larger upward revision in Vancouver (up 3.7 p.p.). Other notable revisions can be seen in Table 4, such as an upward revision in low income in Calgary (in 2011) and Montreal (in 2006). Because the population of Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal make up a large share of Canada’s population, much of the revision at the Canada level can be associated with revisions in these large CMAs.
Comparing revised 2011 low-income rates to 2012 rates from the CIS indicates that the rates were steady across the 2011-12 period in most provinces and CMAs.
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