Our friends in Stats Canada put out yet another interesting article yesterday comparing the income of Canadians and specifically Canadian families. Being a member of a Canadian family as usual I find the numbers fascinating (but I do have a Math degree as well, so I will try to temper my enthusiasm).
The Data in this survey seems to center around the Median Income numbers for the groups in question. If we ask our friends at Wikipedia they remind us:
The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one.
Keeping that in mind (this is not the AVERAGE income but the value in the middle of the entire sample), there are some interesting facts to be seen.
Our friends at Stats Canada Point out:
Families had an estimated median income after taxes of $58,300 in 2006, up 2.1% from 2005 in real terms. It was the third consecutive annual increase. In 2006, the increase was mainly the result of gains in both market income and government transfers.
Now that is ALL families (a very large sample given it includes groups of two people or more), in the Two parents with Children category (where I live) income was up from $74,200 to $74,900 which isn’t bad (ok it’s better than it going down), which is a 0.93% increase. Inflation at that time was somewhere around 2.0% (I am guessing don’t have the exact numbers) so that means the Median families were losing ground.
| Selected income concepts by main family types | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 2006 | |||||||
| Market income | Government transfers | Income taxes | After-tax income | Market income | Government transfers | Income taxes | After-tax income | |
| median (2006 constant dollars) | ||||||||
| Economic families, two persons or more | 58,800 | 4,000 | 8,700 | 57,100 | 59,600 | 4,500 | 9,000 | 58,300 |
| Senior families | 22,600 | 22,400 | 3,000 | 41,200 | 23,300 | 22,600 | 2,800 | 42,400 |
| Non-senior couples without children | 65,000 | 200 | 10,600 | 56,800 | 65,400 | 700 | 10,500 | 57,900 |
| Two-parent families with children | 74,200 | 2,800 | 11,800 | 67,000 | 74,900 | 3,300 | 12,000 | 67,900 |
| Female lone-parent families | 22,600 | 6,900 | 500 | 30,900 | 23,100 | 7,400 | 700 | 31,700 |
| Unattached individuals | 18,400 | 500 | 2,000 | 21,800 | 18,900 | 600 | 2,100 | 22,800 |
Interesting statistics to look over and decypher.
Any other comments?
Thanks! I think their list is pretty good anyhow 🙂
It would be easy, and wrong, to assume that having children increases your income, since married with children category out-earns the “Economic family” class. I figure it is just because two-parent families with kids are older and have been working longer than “economic families” without kids.
Is “Economic families” where married, childless people fit?
Also, sad to see that female lone-parents make less than a third of what two-parent families make. Sad, but not surprising.
You’re in my top five, bigcajunman, the Globe & Mail people are crazy.