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• After-tax income and each of its principal components - market income, government transfers and income tax - remained stable in 2010 compared with 2009.
• Median after-tax income for Canadian families of two or more persons was $65,500 in 2010, virtually unchanged compared with 2009. After-tax income did not change significantly for the third consecutive year, after a period of growth which began in 2004.
• Median after-tax income for unattached individuals remained stable from 2009 to 2010. Non-seniors received $27,500; seniors received $23,400.
• Median after-tax income for families with two persons or more was unchanged from 2009 to 2010 in all provinces. Alberta had the highest median after-tax income for economic families with two persons or more, $78,100 in 2010.
• From 2009 to 2010, 52.8% of people had an increase in their adjusted after-tax household income compared with 62.4% from 2006 to 2007, just before the recession.
• Median market income for families with two persons or more was $64,900 in 2010, unchanged from 2009. For the unattached, median market income was $20,800 in 2010, unchanged from 2009.
• The median amount of government transfers received by Canadian families and unattached individuals was unchanged in 2010 from 2009. Families received a median amount of $6,500, the unattached a median of $1,800.
• Among families of two persons or more, the median income tax paid in 2010 was $8,200, unchanged from 2009. The median income tax paid by non-senior families rose to $10,000 in 2010 from $9,700 in 2009.
• According to the after-tax low income cut-offs (LICO-AT), 3 million Canadians, or 9.0% of the population, lived in low income in 2010, virtually unchanged from 2009. This is the third consecutive year with no change, following the generally downward trend that began in the mid-1990s.
• About 546,000 children younger than 18 lived in low-income families in 2010, or 8.1% of children in families. This was unchanged from 2009, but down from 13.8% in 2000.
• In 9 of 10 provinces, the incidence of low income based on the Market Basket Measure (MBM) was unchanged from 2009 to 2010. Alberta was the exception: its incidence of low income declined from 10.1% in 2009 to 8.4% in 2010. Also, persons living in low income in this province had, on average, incomes closer to the MBM threshold than in 2009.
• Looking over time at people moving in and out of low income, around 3% of the population moved into low income annually in the late 2000s based on the LICO-AT, compared with about 5% in the mid-1990s. For those exiting low income, the rate has increased from 28.1% in 1993-to-1994 to 36.9% in 2009-to-2010 period.
• Generally, low income is largely transitory: 82.7% of individuals avoided low income in all years from 2005 to 2010, while 17.3% experienced low income at least once in six years. Fewer were in low income for at least four of the six years (4.1%); even fewer (1.5%) were persistently in low income from 2005 to 2010.