Canadian Income Survey, 2019

Released: 2021-03-23

Median after-tax income, economic families and persons not in an economical family unit

$62,900

2019

0.5%increase

(almanac change)

The median after-taxation income of Canadian families and unattached individuals was $62,900 in 2019. This was virtually unchanged from the previous year. Canada's official poverty rate savage to x.1% in 2019, down 0.9 pct points. While these estimates are for 2019, emerging bear witness for 2020 suggests that COVID-related pandemic benefits may accept offset increases in low income for many Canadian families.

Median family income is steady in 2019

The median after-tax income of Canadian families and unattached individuals was $62,900 in 2019, up 0.v%, which was not a statistically significant change over 2018.

For non-senior families, where the highest-income earner was under 65 years of historic period, the median after-tax income was $93,800 in 2019. Couples with children's median after-taxation income was $105,500, while the median after-revenue enhancement income of female person lone parent families was $52,500.

The median later-revenue enhancement income of senior families, where the highest-income earner was 65 years of age or older, was $64,300 in 2019.

Unattached individuals under 65 years of age had a median later-revenue enhancement income of $33,800, whereas unattached individuals aged 65 years and older had a median after-revenue enhancement income of $29,500.

Nationally, median after-tax income did not change significantly from 2018 to 2019 for whatever family types examined.

While in that location was no pregnant increase in median subsequently-tax income of Canadian families and unattached individuals from 2018 to 2019, the past 2 decades have represented a period of growth in family incomes. Since 2000, the median later on-tax income of Canadian families and unattached individuals has risen at an average rate of 1.2% per year higher up inflation, increasing by most $12,000.

Families in Canada are currently experiencing a profound disruption in their lives as a consequence of the COVID-i9 pandemic, with many facing task loss and financial incertitude. While the estimates from the 2019 Canadian Income Survey do not reflect the impacts of the COVID-iix pandemic, they do provide a reliable and standard baseline for assessing developments during the pandemic, provide useful insights on groups that were most at gamble prior to the pandemic and for measuring the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on the various aspects of income and poverty in the time to come.

Provincial incomes remain relatively unchanged

The median afterwards-tax income for families and unattached individuals remained relatively unchanged across Canada in 2019. Canada was again recovering from oil price shocks that began in the fourth quarter of 2018. Families and unattached individuals in Alberta continued to take the highest median after-tax income of the provinces ($72,500), while those in Nova Scotia had the lowest ($53,300). These income differences between provinces do not take into account factors such as the toll of living and the age of the population unique to each province.

Completing the transition to the 2018-base market handbasket measure

In September 2020, Statistics Canada officially released the 2018-base marketplace basket measure (MBM) poverty estimates and 2018-base of operations MBM thresholds for reference years 2015 to 2018, marking the cease of the second comprehensive review of the MBM. Accordingly, all poverty estimates reported in this release apply these new 2018-base of operations thresholds.

In addition, 2019 is the last year for which Statistics Canada intends to release 2008-base MBM poverty estimates and 2008-base MBM thresholds.

Poverty rate continued to pass up in 2019

The market handbasket measure out (MBM) was adopted every bit Canada'south Official Poverty Line in June 2019. According to the MBM, a family lives in poverty if information technology does not have enough income to purchase a specific basket of goods and services in its community. About 3.vii meg Canadians, or ten.ane% of the population, lived beneath Canada'south Official Poverty Line in 2019, down from 11.0% in 2018.

The decline in the national poverty charge per unit from 2018 to 2019 represents a continuation of a full general downward tendency in the poverty charge per unit observed in contempo years. Except for an increase in 2015 associated with the oil price shock in that yr, the poverty rate has fallen by a statistically significant margin in each yr since 2012.

In 2019, two.7 million adults anile eighteen to 64 lived below the poverty line. The poverty rate in this historic period group was 11.6%, downwards 0.9 percentage points from 2018.

For children under eighteen years of age, the poverty rate was nine.vii% in 2019, which did not represent a statistically pregnant drop from 2018. In 2019, nigh 680,000 children lived below the poverty line in Canada, compared with ane.1 1000000 in 2015.

About 349,000 persons aged 65 and older, or 5.4% of the senior population, lived in poverty in 2019, lilliputian changed from 2018. The poverty rate was two.8% for seniors living in families and xi.seven% for unattached seniors. Compared with 2015, 45,000 fewer seniors lived in poverty in 2019, with unattached seniors (-fouri,000) bookkeeping for most of the drop.

Unattached individuals and lone-parent families are more vulnerable to poverty

Individuals in sure groups are often more than vulnerable to existence in poverty. For example, in 2019, persons not in an economical family or unattached (26.two%) or those living in lonely-parent families (23.i%) were more than likely to be below the poverty line than persons in other family types.

Children in female lone-parent families as well remain more vulnerable to poverty. In 2019, close to ane-third (29.eight%) of those living in female alone-parent families were in poverty, compared with less than one-10th (7.ii%) of those living in couple families.

Historically, marginalized groups such every bit Indigenous peoples, recent immigrants and persons with a disability were more likely to live below the poverty line.

In 2019, nigh 127,000, or 18.0% of Indigenous peoples aged xvi and older living off-reserve were below the poverty line. Amidst Ethnic peoples, 22.1% of Beginning Nations peoples and 13.0% of Métis lived in poverty in 2019.

Amidst contempo immigrants aged xvi and older, that is those who arrived in Canada inside the last 10 years, approximately 411,000 or 17.iv% lived below the poverty line in 2019.

Approximately one.1 million, or 13.5%, of persons with a disability lived below the poverty line in 2019.

As with the national poverty rate, the poverty rate amongst many of these groups has also declined in contempo years.

Statistics Canada also reports low income based on the Low Income Measure (LIM). According to the LIM, which is a relative mensurate, individuals are considered to be living in low income if their household afterward-revenue enhancement income falls below one-half of the median afterward-tax income, adjusting for household size.

The overall low-income rate based on the LIM was 12.one% in 2019, virtually unchanged from 12.3% in 2018. Like the MBM, the LIM has too improved in recent years, although to a lesser degree, falling past 2.1 pct points since 2015.

Income equality improving in Canada

I of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals is to reduce inequality, including income inequality. One target is sustained income growth for the lowest four deciles (the bottom 40% of the population).

When measuring income inequality, it is common practice to apply income measures based on after-revenue enhancement household income that has been adjusted for household size (adapted afterwards-taxation income). Based on adjusted after-tax income, incomes of Canadians in the bottom 4 deciles have been rising quite steadily for more than two decades, increasing by an average of 1.six% per year above aggrandizement since 2000.

Tracking the shares of income held by the different income deciles provides some insight on income inequality in Canada. Based on the adjusted after-taxation income, Canadians in the highest decile accounted for 22.7% of all after-tax income in Canada in 2019, while the lowest four deciles combined had 21.0% of all after-tax income. Withal, the share for the everyman four deciles has been slightly increasing since the beginning of the decade, while the share of the highest decile has been edging down, suggesting a decrease in inequality.

Another popular measure of inequality, the Gini coefficient, has besides shown improvements in recent years.

The Gini coefficient is an alphabetize that takes a value ranging from 0, which indicates a state of perfect equality, to 1 which indicates a state of perfect inequality. Historically, the Gini coefficient was beneath 0.296 in most years from 1976 to 1995, then rose from 1996 to 2000, reaching levels above 0.315 in virtually years from 2000 to 2013, earlier starting to trend downwards. The level of 0.299 reached in 2019 was the lowest Gini coefficient measured for Canada since 1995.

Pandemic benefits mitigate the impact of declines in employment income in early 2020

The pandemic has led to considerable work interruptions in Canada and around the world since mid-March 2020. However, emerging show on 2020 trends suggests that COVID-related pandemic benefits may have mitigated the touch on of declines in employment and earnings for many Canadian families. For more than data please see, Household economical well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, experimental estimates, first quarter to third quarter of 2020.

According to the Labour Strength Survey, in June 2020, more than 1-quarter (28.3%) of Canadians aged fifteen to 69 reported having received some kind of federal income assist payment since the beginning of the pandemic (the Canadian Emergency Response Do good [CERB]), the Canadian Emergency Student Benefit, regular Employment Insurance benefits, or new benefits for which they were unsure of the source). A new experimental method designed to track weekly family incomes in 2020, updated today, suggests that the government pandemic relief benefits offset a potential surge in depression income in March and April 2020 for a large portion of Canadian families.

These results show that while median weekly family unit earnings (wages, salaries and self-employment income) fell strongly from February to April 2020 (-21.ix%), median weekly family income, including income from CERB and other pandemic relief programs, was relatively unchanged, reflecting the offsetting effect of the pandemic relief programs.

Likewise, from February to June 2020, a surge in the share of families with low-weekly earnings was more than than offset by government pandemic relief benefits, such that at that place was a reject in the experimental low-weekly income rate from February (23.3%) to June 2020 (14.half dozen%).

The experimental depression-weekly income charge per unit then climbed during the 2d half of 2020, but remained beneath its pre-pandemic level in December 2020 (17.8%).

Nautical chart 1 Chart 1: Share of persons in families with family income below provincial low-income threshold, by selected income definition, Canada, 2020
Share of persons in families with family income beneath provincial depression-income threshold, by selected income definition, Canada, 2020

Chart 1: Share of persons in families with family income below provincial low-income threshold, by selected income definition, Canada, 2020

Results for different family types suggest that the drops in median weekly earnings observed from February to April 2020 were larger for lone-parent families (-iv0.9%), and unattached individuals (-69.i%), simply these were also offset by government transfers for these groups. The surge in low-weekly earnings was similar for men and women, reflecting the fact that the family earnings mensurate would mask gender differences in the pandemic-related economic shock.

Blackness Canadians, other population groups designated as visible minorities, and Indigenous people also faced more difficult labour market situations over the pandemic (for more information please see, Study: A labour market snapshot of Blackness Canadians during the pandemic). The experimental low-weekly income rate was also higher for Black Canadians (24.2% in December 2020) and other visible minority groups as well as Indigenous people (28.four%) than for not-visible minorities (16.four%) over the final three months of the year.

These experimental estimates of median weekly family income and low-weekly income currently exclude families with persons aged 65 and older, as well every bit income sources such as provincial social assistance, and do not include taxes. They too do not reflect possible repayments of pandemic benefits. These statistics cannot be directly compared with the official poverty charge per unit (MBM) or low-income rates based on the low-income measure out (LIM). Continued evolution of the experimental weekly family income estimates is underway.





Sustainable Development Goals

On January i, 2016, the world officially began implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development—the United Nations' transformative plan of activeness that addresses urgent global challenges over the side by side 15 years. The plan is based on 17 specific Sustainable Development Goals, 169 targets and 244 indicators.

Data from the Canadian Income Survey are an instance of how Statistics Canada supports the reporting on the global Sustainable Development Goals. This release will be used to calculate indicators such as the market basket measure and the low-income mensurate, which are role of the post-obit goals:

  Note to readers

This release only covers the 10 provinces. The release of 2018 results for the territories from the Canadian Income Survey is scheduled for Apr 1, 2021. Results for 2019 will follow this summer.

The Canadian Income Survey estimates are based on probability samples and are therefore subject to sampling variability, especially for smaller groups and geographies. Equally a upshot, yr-to-year estimates will evidence more variability than trends observed over longer time periods.

In this release, differences between estimates are statistically significant at the 95% conviction level unless otherwise noted.

Experimental median weekly family income and experimental low-weekly income statistics presented in this release are based on weekly income and include selected income sources only. They also employ an experimental depression-weekly income threshold. Therefore, these statistics cannot be direct compared with annual statistics on median income or annual statistics on the official poverty charge per unit (MBM) or the depression-income charge per unit based on the low-income measure (LIM). Measurement for population groups designated as visible minorities started in July 2020, significant information technology is not possible to respond whether the situation was dissimilar for this grouping during the early months of the pandemic.

Definitions

An economical family unit refers to a grouping of two or more than persons who live in the same home and are related to each other by blood, marriage, common-law union, adoption or a foster relationship. This concept differs from the census family concept used for subprovincial data in the Annual Income Estimates for Demography Families and Individuals.

Senior families refer to families where the highest income earner is anile 65 or over.

Not-senior families refer to families where the highest income earner is under 65 years old.

Ethnic peoples refers to persons, aged 16 and over, who cocky-identified as being an Aboriginal person; that is, First Nations (North American Indian), Métis or Inuk (Inuit).

Persons with a disability refers to a person, aged sixteen and over, who met the disability screening questions criteria.

This release analyzes income on the basis of medians. The median is the level of income at which half the population had higher income and half had lower. Income estimates are expressed in 2018 constant dollars to factor in aggrandizement and enable comparisons beyond time in existent terms.

After-tax income is the full of market income and authorities transfers, less income tax.

Marketplace income consists of employment income and individual pensions, likewise as income from investments and other market sources.

Government transfers include benefits such as Onetime Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the Canada Pension Plan and the Quebec Pension Plan, Employment Insurance, social assistance, the goods and services tax or harmonized sales tax credit, provincial tax credits, and kid benefits.

Income inequality refers to the extent that income is distributed unequally among members of a population. While in that location are dissimilar means to describe income inequality, this analysis reports on the share of adjusted later-taxation income held by various segments of the income distribution. For more data on Sustainable Evolution Goal 10.1, delight refer to The Sustainable Development Goals Study.

For statistics on income inequality, information technology is common practice to utilize income measures based on subsequently-tax household income that has been adapted for household size (adjusted after-tax income). Adjusting for household size allows users to compare the income of households of different sizes. The adjustment is made past dividing household income by the foursquare root of the household size and assigning this value to all persons in the household. This adjustment distributes income among the members of the household, and takes into account the economies of scale present in larger households, the increasing number of individuals living on their own and the reject in family size over time. Adjusted after-taxation income is also used in the adding of the low-income measure.

The low-income measure ( LIM ) defines an private equally having low income if their adjusted subsequently-tax income falls beneath 50% of the median adjusted after-tax income.

The market place basket measure (MBM) is based on the price of a specific basket of goods and services representing a modest, basic standard of living. It includes the costs of food, clothing, footwear, transportation, shelter and other expenses for a reference family. These costs are compared with the disposable income of families to determine whether or not they autumn below the poverty line. For more information please run across, Report on the second comprehensive review of the Market place Basket Measure.

Today, Statistics Canada is updating the Dimensions of Poverty Hub. The Hub, sponsored by Employment and Social Development Canada, enables Canadians to track progress on poverty reduction. The Hub features data, analysis, infographics and 13 operation indicators, and will go along to exist updated regularly as new data becomes available. Today, the Hub includes updates for: Canada's official poverty line, deep income poverty, relative low income, bottom xl% income share, average poverty gap, low income entry and get out rates, median hourly wage and asset resilience. The Hub also includes data on other aspects of poverty such as food insecurity, core housing need, and the share of youth not in employment, education or training. While this information does not yet reflect the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, information technology does provide useful insights on groups that were most at risk prior to the pandemic and will serve every bit a baseline for measuring the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the various aspects of poverty in the future.

Products

The infographics "Income of Canadians, 2019" and "Canada's Official Poverty Dashboard of Indicators: Trends, March 2021" are now bachelor.

The commodity "Experimental estimates of family weekly income, update" is now bachelor.

Contact information

For more than data, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (price-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; STATCAN.infostats-infostats.STATCAN@canada.ca) or Media Relations (613-951-4636; STATCAN.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.STATCAN@canada.ca).

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