Data source for distributions: the Survey of Financial Security

Annual household distributions of assets, liabilities and net worth in the NBSA are based on the Survey of Financial Security (SFS). The SFS collects information from a sample of Canadian families on their assets, debts, employment, income and education, providing a comprehensive picture of their wealth (net worth). Information is collected on the value of all major financial and non-financial assets and on the money owing on mortgages, vehicles, credit cards, student loans and other debts.

The SFS is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design. It has been conducted on an occasional basis, in 1999, 2005, and 2012, and starting with 2016, it will be undertaken triennially. The SFS covers the population in the ten Canadian provinces. Within the provinces, certain groups are excluded (for instance, persons living on reserves or other Indigenous settlements and chronic care patients living in hospitals or nursing homes), which represent about 2% of the population.

Over the years, the SFS sample size and survey design have varied. For 2012 and later reference years, the initial sample size was approximately 20,000 dwellings and the design focused on producing reliable estimates at the provincial level.

Data are generally collected directly from respondents, while in some cases additional information is extracted from administrative files and derived from Statistics Canada surveys and other sources via record linkage. Examples include the use of personal tax data records and regulatory information on the terms and conditions of employer-sponsored pension plans. Interviews are conducted via Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) with an average length of approximately 45 minutes.

The survey is not mandatory and the response rates were 68.6% and 70.3% in 2012 and 2016 respectively, and 59.4% in 2019

The SFS data used for the DHEA differs slightly from the actual SFS estimates, as they have been reweighted to take into account additional and more relevant population control totals and to reduce the impact of certain outliers.

More information can be found under Definitions, data source and methods for SFS (survey number 2620) and tables 11-10-0016-01, 11-10-0049-01 and 11-10-0057-01.