The Evolution of Elderly Poverty in Canada

Abstract

In this article, I extend the analysis of head-count measures of income and consumption poverty to all currently available microdata. Along with standard measures, I implement a relative poverty indicator using the well-being of working age families as a benchmark. I find that poverty among elderly families decreased sharply through the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, relative measures of income poverty increased because non-elderly incomes have risen more quickly than elderly incomes. Since the 1980s, a sharp spike in income poverty has emerged between the ages of 55 and 64, with no counterpart in the consumption data.