Social assistance programs from all levels of government

National Child Tax Benefit program

Employment Training programs

Government transfers

How many families are living in low income and how has this changed over time?

Do existing programs reduce the number of children who live in low-income families?

How have parental benefits and income programs changed family circumstances?

What is the impact of housing costs on lower-income families? What proportion of their income do they spend on rent?

An estimated 633,000 families were living in low income in 2006, unchanged from 2005. However, families in low income needed on average $7,000 to climb above the low income cut-off, an improvement compared to the 2005 average of $8,000.

About 760,000 children under 18 were living in low income families in 2006, a number unchanged from 2005, but down from the 1.3 million in 1996.

Low income cut-off after-tax for families of 4 persons reached $33216 in cities of more than 500,000 inhabitants in 2006. (i.e. Quebec City and Winnipeg).

For every $100 in total income received by Canadian families in 2006, an average of $7 came from government transfers.

Two-parent families with children saw an increase in the amount of government transfers between 2005 and 2006 in part because of the introduction of the Universal Child Care Benefit which provided families $100 per month for each child under 6. Their median government transfers were $3,300  which was $500 more than the previous year.

Measuring affordability involves comparing housing costs to a household's ability to meet them. One common measure is the shelter cost-to-income ratio (STIR). The 30% level is commonly accepted as the upper limit for affordable housing. Lower-income households spent a higher share of their incomes on shelter and were more likely to surpass the affordability benchmark between 2002 and 2004. In fact, over 80% of people in households exceeding the benchmark fell into the bottom 40% of the income distribution. The median market rent was $8,300 for market renters, which is about 23% of their income. If subsidized renters had paid the median market rent of $8,300 rather than their subsidized rents ($5,000), their median STIR would have been 42% instead of 26%. This helps make their shelter costs much more affordable when compared with their very low median incomes.

National Child Tax Benefit program

Provincial social assistance programs

How many female single-parent families are living in low income and how has this changed over time?

How many children end up living in low income because of family break-up (divorce or separation)?

What impact do changes in social housing policy have on female single-parent families?

In 2006, 28.2% of female lone-parent families were living in low income down from 29.1% in 2005 and 52.7% in 1996.

A study found that approximately 2% of children from 2003 fell into low income in 2004. For 42% of these children, the main reason was a change in their family environment (for example, parental separation or a new sibling).

57% of female lone-parent families were in households that spent above the affordability benchmark at some point during the 2002 to 2004 period.

Median household income of female single-parent families was $30,500 between 2002 and 2004. They spent about 27% of this on shelter costs.

Income tax rates and tax credits

RRSPs

Which families experience difficulty after changes in market conditions?

How are people opting to invest their money?

What impact do shifts in interest rates and drops/increases in stock markets have on the high-income group?

The 20% of families with the highest family after-tax income did not experience a significant increase in their average after-tax income between 2005 ($130,700) and 2006 ($133,900). However, their average after-tax income increased by 27%, the fastest growth over the 1996 to 2006 period.

The 20% of families and unattached individuals with the highest after-tax income in 2006 paid 59.4% of all personal income taxes that year.

In 2006, the average after-tax income was $133,900 for the 20% of families with the highest income (highest quintile).

As a point of comparison, the income of the families in the highest income quintile was about 5.4 times higher than those in the lowest income.

Employment Training programs

Government transfers

Education loans and grant programs

Who is more likely to take postsecondary education?

What impact does education have on earning potential over the course of a person’s working life?

Do student loans increase access to postsecondary education?

Youth from upper income families and youth with university-educated parents are more likely to attend university.

Youth from two-parent families are more likely to go on to postsecondary studies than youth from single-parent families.

Females are more likely to attend university than males.

Canadians who have not completed high school have a higher probability of being exposed continuously to low income than university graduates.

In 2006, almost 10% percent of the population (16-45) had ever received a student loan.

Canadians who had ever received a student loan, on average, borrowed $12,900 and still owed $5,900 at the end of 2006.

Retirement income security programs such as: Old Age Security, Canada and Québec Pension Plans and RRSPs

Housing programs

Government transfers

Do seniors have sufficient resources to provide for their needs?

How reliant are they on government programs?

Do they have adequate housing?

What is the impact of OAS/GIS for seniors?

Do low-income rates vary across different senior family types?

Government transfers are higher for seniors than for people of working age.

In 2006, senior families relied less on earnings compare to non-senior families and more on government transfers. For every $100 of total income, they received $46 from government transfers.

Just under half of workers in their 50s and 60s who ended a full-time career job between 1993 and 1997 were working 24 months later. Three in 10 began a new full-time job, while 1 in 10 began a part-time job.

A large proportion of government transfers to senior families were from OAS/GIS/SPA (48%) and CPP/QPP (43%), while the other 9% were allocated to other transfer programs.

Seniors living on their own were 7.0 times more likely to be in low income compared to seniors in economic families.

Employment Insurance

Income tax rates and tax credits

Retraining programs

Workers' compensation benefits

Government funding towards private companies

Government funding towards charitable organizations and non-profit organizations

Programs for regional development and job creation

Minimum wage policies

How do long-term earnings of women who have children early in life compare with those who delay childbearing?

Who is chronically unemployed?

When someone loses a job, how long does it take to find another job?

How do workers upgrade skills for career advancement?

Does education influence type of job or the opportunity for promotion? 

Does education influence type of job or the opportunity for promotion? 

How do older workers keep their skills up-to-date?

How many are unemployed in 2006?

What is the composition of income for non-senior families and senior families?

How many paid employees work at minimum wage jobs?

How many paid employees take training related to their job?

How has EI benefits changed over time?

The average hourly wages of mothers that delay having children are 17.1% higher than mothers that have children early while wives that delay marriage earn 7.8% more than wives that marry early.

Women comprised 55% of the chronically unemployed population, and the problem was especially acute for single mothers.

In addition, people who had not graduated from high-school were over-represented in the population of the chronically unemployed, as were people who live in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, members of visible minority groups and people with disabilities.

Overall, unemployed people as a single group averaged 2.2 spells of unemployment of at least 22 weeks each, over the 1993 to 2001 period.

Adults who went back to school and completed a postsecondary certificate generally registered higher gains in earnings than those who did not participate, even when factors such as firm size, occupation, industry, union status, and province were taken into account.

Older men and women who stayed with the same employer while obtaining a postsecondary certificate registered gains in hourly earnings that were 13% and 7% higher respectively than their counterparts who did not go back to school.

15% of the working age population (16 to 64 years of age) was unemployed some time during 2006, and 1.3% was unemployed for the whole year.

Among non-senior families, earnings made up the largest share of income before taxes. For every $100 of total income, families received $93 from market income and $7 was from government transfers. Senior families receiving almost six times as much of their total income from government transfers. For every $100 of total income in 2006, they received $39 from government transfers and $61 from the market.

In 2006, 5.4% of all paid employees earned minimum wage from their main job.

In 2006, 22% of all paid employees took a course related to their job.

For individuals who received EI benefits the average benefit was $5,400 in 2006, no change from 2005.

Employment Equity

Transportation needs

Employment Insurance

Housing

Medical Expense Tax Credit

Disability Tax Credit

Are people with disabilities more likely to live in low income?

Do people with disabilities have more difficulty obtaining government services?

What are the employment and education barriers faced by people with disabilities?

Are existing government services meeting the needs of people with disabilities – employment insurance, CPP?

Mobility problems are the disability most often reported by adults.

About one-fifth of the working population (aged 16 to 64) reported a disability that limited their activity in 2006.

Of Canadians aged 16 and over who experienced a disability in 2006, 14% were in low income.

Employment Equity

Multiculturalism

Health

Immigration

Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada

Citizenship Act

Are recent immigrants more likely to live in low income compared to longer-term immigrants?

Does potential earning capacity of immigrants differ depending on year and country of arrival in Canada?

What is the incidence of under-employment among highly skilled immigrants?

New immigrants to Canada are more than twice as likely to be in low income as the Canadian born, a gap that has been widening for two decades.

Slightly over one in ten (12%) immigrants (excluding youth and children less than 16) were living in low income in 2006.

More than one-half (52%) of recent immigrants with a university degree worked in a job requiring only high school education at some point during the six-year period. This was almost twice the proportion of 28% among their Canadian-born counterparts.