IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mcm/sedapp/186.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Which Canadian Seniors Are Below the Low-Income Measure?

Author

Listed:
  • Michael R. Veall

Abstract

About 6% of seniors in Canada have family incomes below the Low-Income Measure. (The Low-Income Measure is 50% of the median family income, adjusted for family size, and is a commonly used, if arbitrary, operational definition of relative poverty.) This is a low rate by international standards, in sharp contrast to the high rate in Canada about 35 years ago. It is lower than the comparable rates for the general Canadian population or for families with children and more Canadians leave below-LIM status during their retirement years than enter it. Canadian income tax data show that the remaining 6% are disproportionately immigrant, female, currently unmarried and supporting dependent children (possibly grandchildren). Age does not appear to be of great importance.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael R. Veall, 2007. "Which Canadian Seniors Are Below the Low-Income Measure?," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 186, McMaster University.
  • Handle: RePEc:mcm:sedapp:186
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/sedap/p/sedap186.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin Milligan, 2008. "The Evolution of Elderly Poverty in Canada," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(s1), pages 79-94, November.
    2. Thomas F. Crossley & Krishna Pendakur, 2002. "Consumption Inequality," Department of Economics Working Papers 2002-09, McMaster University.
    3. Lars Osberg, 2001. "Poverty Among Senior Citizens: A Canadian Success Story," The State of Economics in Canada: Festschrift in Honour of David Slater, in: Patrick Grady & Andrew Sharpe (ed.),The State of Economics in Canada: Festschrift in Honour of David Slater, pages 151-181, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    4. Myles, John, 2000. "The Maturation of Canada's Retirement Income System: Income Levels, Income Inequality and Low Income Among the Elderly," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2000147e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald & Doug Andrews & Robert L. Brown, 2011. "The Canadian Elder Standard - Pricing the Cost of Basic Needs for the Canadian Elderly," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 286, McMaster University.
    2. McDonald, James Ted & Worswick, Christopher, 2013. "Retirement Incomes, Labour Supply and Co-residency Decisions of Older Immigrants in Canada: 1991-2006," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2013-23, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 29 Apr 2013.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael R. Veall, 2008. "Canadian Seniors and the Low Income Measure," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(s1), pages 47-58, November.
    2. Kevin Milligan, 2008. "The Evolution of Elderly Poverty in Canada," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(s1), pages 79-94, November.
    3. Van Vliet, Olaf & Been, Jim & Caminada, Koen & Goudswaard, Kees, 2011. "Pension reform and income inequality among the elderly in 15 European countries," MPRA Paper 32940, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Marchand, J. & Smeeding, T., 2016. "Poverty and Aging," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 905-950, Elsevier.
      • Marchand, Joseph & Smeeding, Timothy, 2016. "Poverty and Aging," Working Papers 2016-11, University of Alberta, Department of Economics, revised 20 Nov 2016.
    5. Sam Norris & Krishna Pendakur, 2013. "Imputing rent in consumption measures, with an application to consumption poverty in Canada, 1997-2009," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1537-1570, November.
    6. Jeremy Lise & Shannon Seitz, 2011. "Consumption Inequality and Intra-household Allocations," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 78(1), pages 328-355.
    7. Bustillo, Inés & Velloso, Helvia & Vézina, François, 2006. "The Canadian retirement income system," Documentos de Proyectos 3682, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    8. William B. P. Robson, 2001. "Six Pillars of Social Policy: The State of Pensions and Health Care in Canada," The State of Economics in Canada: Festschrift in Honour of David Slater, in: Patrick Grady & Andrew Sharpe (ed.),The State of Economics in Canada: Festschrift in Honour of David Slater, pages 183-224, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    9. James Williamson & Timothy Smeeding, 2004. "Sliding into Poverty? Cross-National Patterns of Income Source Change and Income Decay in Old Age," LIS Working papers 388, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    10. Lori J. Curtis & Kate Rybczynski, 2014. "Exiting Poverty: Does Sex Matter?," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 40(2), pages 126-142, June.
    11. Juan Luo & Bao-zhen Li, 2022. "Impact of Digital Financial Inclusion on Consumption Inequality in China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 529-553, September.
    12. Sule Alan & Kadir Atalay & Thomas F. Crossley, 2008. "The Adequacy of Retirement Savings: Subjective Survey Reports by Retired Canadians," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(s1), pages 95-118, November.
    13. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2011. "Viewpoint: Further results on measuring the well‐being of the poor using income and consumption," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(1), pages 52-87, February.
    14. Garry F. Barrett & Yi-Ping Tseng, 2008. "Retirement Saving in Australia," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(s1), pages 177-193, November.
    15. Bev Dahlby & Kevin Milligan, 2017. "From theory to practice: Canadian economists’ contributions to public finance," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(5), pages 1324-1347, December.
    16. -, 2018. "Promoting equality: An interregional perspective," Documentos de Proyectos 43677, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    17. Picot, Garnett & Larochelle-Cote, Sebastien & Myles, John, 2008. "Income Security and Stability During Retirement in Canada," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2008306e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    18. Malcolm Hamilton, 2001. "The Financial Circumstances of Elderly Canadians and the Implications for the Design of Canada’s Retirement Income System," The State of Economics in Canada: Festschrift in Honour of David Slater, in: Patrick Grady & Andrew Sharpe (ed.),The State of Economics in Canada: Festschrift in Honour of David Slater, pages 225-253, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    19. McDonald, James Ted & Worswick, Christopher, 2013. "Retirement Incomes, Labour Supply and Co-residency Decisions of Older Immigrants in Canada: 1991-2006," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2013-23, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 29 Apr 2013.
    20. Robert Andersen & M. McIvor, 2013. "GINI Country Report: Growing Inequalities and their Impacts in Canada," GINI Country Reports canada, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    relative poverty; Canadian income distribution; pension adequacy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mcm:sedapp:186. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demcmca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.