National Seniors Day: Older Canadians are proudly Canadian

October 1 is National Seniors Day. In 2024, there were 5.5 million Canadians living in a senior family—families in which the highest income earner is aged 65 years or older—as well as 2.2 million unattached seniors. Today, seniors, also known as older Canadians, are proudly Canadian, report a high level of satisfaction with their family relationships and are less likely to be living in poverty than Canadians overall.

The median after-tax income among Canadian senior families increased 2.3% from the previous year to reach $83,200 in 2024, while that of unattached seniors rose 3.5% to $38,600.

The poverty rate for seniors aged 65 years and older (5.4%) was less than half of the national average in 2024 (11.0%) and decreased 0.5 percentage points from 2023, representing a second consecutive annual decrease. 

Among senior families, the poverty rate was unchanged in 2024, at 4.0%. The rate for unattached seniors, however, declined from 12.5% in 2023 to 11.1% in 2024, alongside an increase in median after-tax income.

In 2024, approximately 9.8 million people, or 24.0% of Canadians, lived in households that reported some form of food insecurity.

People in senior families (9.9%), specifically senior couples (7.1%), were at a much lower risk of experiencing food insecurity in 2024 than the population overall. By comparison, unattached seniors (13.0%) experienced higher levels of food insecurity than those in senior families.

Health-adjusted life expectancy provides a measure of both longevity and health status of Canadians, offering a more complete picture of population health than life expectancy alone.

In 2023, at age 65 years, Canadian females could expect to live another 22.3 years, with 15.8 of those years being in good health. By comparison, males aged 65 years had a remaining life expectancy of 19.7 years and a health-adjusted life expectancy of 14.7 years.

This means that females could expect to live 2.6 years longer overall and 1.1 more years in good health than males. However, females could also expect to spend 6.5  years with health limitations after age 65 years, compared with 5.0 years for males.

Although females live longer in both absolute and healthy years, males spend a greater share of their lives in good health. At 65 years of age, males could expect to spend 75% of their remaining years in good health, compared with 71% for females.

Canadian males and females in higher income groups generally live in good health longer than those in lower income groups.

In 2023, the health-adjusted life expectancy at age 65 years for people in the bottom 20% of the income bracket was 13.6 years, compared with 16.0 years for those in the top 20%, representing a difference of 2.4 years.

In late 2024, we asked Canadians if they were satisfied with their family relationships. Just under four in five seniors (79.4%) reported high satisfaction with family relationships, the largest share of any age group and above the national average of 75.0%.

Seniors who were separated or divorced were also more likely to report having high satisfaction with their family relationships (69%) than younger separated or divorced adults (59%) in 2024.

In the spring of 2025, 78% of Canadian citizens reported being proud or very proud to be Canadian, up from 74% in the fall of 2024.

Sentiments of pride increase with age, with seniors continuing to express particularly high levels of Canadian pride. In the spring of 2025, nearly 9 in 10 Canadians aged 65 to 74 years felt proud or very proud to be Canadian (88%), and among those aged 75 years and older, this share increased to 91%.