Impact on survey estimates

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The estimates have been recalculated to take into account changes in population counts from the 2006 Census. These revisions have had some minor impacts on the SLID survey estimates. In evaluating the effect of the historical revision on the SLID estimates for 2006 to 2009, the first focus was on family type, followed by income and low income.

Family Type

Some changes were noted in the different family types (Table 4). At the Canada level, the number of people in economic families of 2 persons or more increased slightly (0.3% in 2009), while the number of unattached individuals decreased (0.6% in 2006 and 1.8% in 2009).  Half of the provinces saw an increase in economic families of 2 persons or more, with Alberta seeing the largest increase (2.0% in 2006 and 1.9% in 2009).  Out of the provinces that saw a decrease in unattached individuals, Quebec showed the largest difference, with a reduction of 4.7% in 2006 and 7.4% in 2009. 

In addition to a decline in the number of unattached people, SLID also saw a noticeable decrease in the number of people who were married without children (married couples) at the Canada level.  These estimates were reduced by 54,000 (-1.2%) in 2006 and 111,000 (-2.5%) in 2009.  This was most apparent in New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, that respectively saw decreases of 11.2% and 10.1% in their 2009 estimates.

In contrast, the number of people who were considered to be in a married couple with other relatives (without children) increased by 2.4% in 2009. This was most prominent in Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador with increases of 8.1% and 4.9%, respectively.

Table 4
Comparison of revised and unrevised population estimates by family type for 2006 and 2009, Canada

Income

Overall, the historical revision had a small effect on the average and median income estimates, but had no impact on the trends previously shown by SLID. These trends will be discussed in Impact on previous findings. Because the impact of the revision is similar in magnitude for all years during the 2006-2009 period, the discussion is limited to 2006 and 2009.

Table 5 presents the revised and unrevised estimates of median earnings, median government transfers, median income tax and median after-tax income for 2006 and 2009 at the Canada level.  The total number of earners in 2006 and 2009 was revised downward with the new population counts.  The same trend is seen with the number of full-time full-year earners, while median earnings for all earners increased slightly.

Table 5
Comparison of revised and unrevised income estimates for 2006 and 2009, Canada

After the revision, the median income tax and median after-tax income both decreased for unattached individuals in 2006 and 2009. The median income tax for unattached individuals decreased 2.0% in 2006 and 1.6% in 2009, while their median after-tax income decreased 0.7% in 2006 and 0.3% in 2009. The opposite was seen with economic families. They saw an upward revision of median income tax of 0.3% in 2006 and 1.1% in 2009. Median after-tax income was also revised upward, with an increase of 0.1% in 2006 and 0.6% in 2009. The majority of provinces saw a slight increase in median after-tax income for economic families, while over half of the provinces saw a decrease in median after-tax income for unattached individuals. See Statistical Tables 13 to 22 for provincial statistics.

While the revision brought about slight changes to the income estimates mentioned above, there was little impact on the trends. Graphs 1 and 2 show the impact of the revision on the time series for median after-tax income for economic families and unattached individuals. The historical revision produced series that are comparable to the original ones. Both the revised and unrevised estimates for economic families and unattached individuals saw the largest increase between 2006 and 2007 (of approximately 4%), while between 2007 and 2008 and between 2008 and 2009 the estimates were virtually unchanged.

Graph 1
Comparison of revised and unrevised median after-tax income for economic families of 2 persons or more, 2005 to 2009, Canada

Graph 2
Comparison of revised and unrevised median after-tax income for unattached individuals, 2005 to 2009, Canada

Table 6 shows the revised and unrevised after-tax income shares by adjusted after-tax income quintiles¹ for 2006 and 2009.  At both the Canada and provincial levels, the income distribution amongst the five quintiles was not affected by the historical revision. Provincial statistics are provided in the Statistical tables and graphs.

Table 6
Comparison of unrevised and revised after-tax income shares for 2006 and 2009, Canada

Low income

SLID produces low income statistics using three complementary low income lines (Statistics Canada, 2012): Statistics Canada's Low Income Cut-off (LICO) and Low Income Measure (LIM) as well as the Market Basket Measure (MBM) developed by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC).

The three measures of low income rates were revised slightly downwards (Table 7). All three of the low income measures were similarly affected, with no significant decreases at the Canada level for all persons.

Table 7
Comparison of unrevised and revised low income rates (%) for 2006 and 2009, Canada

Graph 3 shows the impact of the revision on the time series of the various low income measures. The revision produced series that are parallel to the original ones.

Graph 3
Comparison of unrevised and revised low income rates from 2005 to 2009, Canada

The provincial low income statistics can be seen in the Statistical Charts 2 through 11. The Quebec LICOs for all persons and person living in families were revised downwards by 0.4 percentage points in 2009; these were the only significant differences observed at the provincial level for all three measures of low income. Larger drops in levels of low income can be seen in smaller populations groups, such as elderly families in some Atlantic provinces.

Note

1. The quintiles are calculated over the population of individuals where each of them is represented by their household after-tax income. This income is further adjusted to take into account the number of persons in the household, and the relative increase in expenses associated with larger households.