This report examines the financial health and vulnerability of households in Canada’s 35 largest cities, using a new composite index of household financial health at the neighbourhood level, the Neighbourhood Financial Health Index or NFHI. The NFHI is designed to shine a light on the dynamics...
This article in the Economic Insights series from Statistics Canada examines the economic well-being of millennials by comparing their household balance sheets to those of previous generations of young Canadians. Measured at the same point in their life course, millennials were relatively better...
These results are from the new study "Debt and assets among senior Canadian families." released in April 2018. The study examines changes in debt, assets and net worth among Canadian families whose major income earner was 65 years of age or older. In recent years, household debt has increased....
Economic well-being has both a present component and a future component. In the present, economic well-being is characterized by the ability of individuals and small groups, such as families or households, to consistently meet their basic needs, including food, clothing, housing, utilities, health...
This is a one-hour webinar on increasing take up of Registered Education Savings Plans (RESPs) among people on low incomes. Our panelists share challenges and success stories in their work to help clients save for their children’s post-secondary education. Learn successful outreach strategies,...
This brief explains the asset-building approach to poverty reduction. While many families who live on low incomes struggle to meet basic needs, they miss out on opportunities to save and invest - opportunities that are critical in overcoming poverty. Without income, people are unable to get by...
The Neighbourhood Financial Health Index (NFHI) is a powerful new measure and visualization tool created to help municipalities, community organizations, and residents to explore the different dimensions and distribution of financial health in their community. The first of its kind in Canada, the...
Canada ranks consistently as one of the best places to live in the world and one of the wealthiest. When it comes to looking at the financial health of Canadian households, however, we are often forced to rely on incomplete measures, like income alone, or aggregate national statistics that tell us...
In this video presentation Katherine Scott from the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) shares the new Neighbourhood Financial Health Index, a mapping tool which uses composite data about income, assets, debt, and poverty to show levels of financial health at the neighbourhood...
The JPMorgan Chase Institute has assembled data assets and perspectives on income and spending volatility over the last three years and examined the impacts of extraordinary income changes from job loss and extraordinary expense changes, notably from medical payments. Here we take a holistic view...
This article examines changes in the wealth of Canadian families (i.e. total family assets minus total family debt) over the period from 1999 to 2012, with a particular focus on changes across income quintiles. The paper also examines changes in the concentration of wealth across income quintiles,...
A registered disability savings plan (RDSP) is a savings plan that is intended to help parents and others save for the long-term financial security of a person who is eligible for the disability tax credit...
Spending responses to income are typically explained by households’ capital structures. Households that hold little or no liquid wealth have to consume hand-to-mouth. However, we find that few individuals hold little or no liquidity, and we document that liquidity holdings are much larger than...
This reports on research results from an experiment in Malawi that varied the timing of workers' income receipt in two ways. First, payments were made either in weekly installments or as a monthly lump sum, in order to vary the extent to which workers had to save up to make pro table investments....
This is a short brief on the RESP and Canada Learning bond. Education savings are an important first step in making a post-secondary education more attainable for a low income student. The Canada Learning Bond, a federal grant that can only be received into a Registered Education Savings Plan...
This is a Presentation showing several different frameworks for assets and financial capability, collected by the CFED. This includes the Household Financial Security framework, the Financial Capability Lifecycle, Road to Economic Security, and...
This report focuses on the role that policy design can have on closing the country’s unrelenting and unacceptable racial wealth divide. We utilize a new framework—The Racial Wealth Audit—launched jointly by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University (IASP) and Demos to...
This is an infographic on the Adaptive Prosperity framework developed by the Indiana Association for Community Economic Development. This is a collaborative vision of empowerment and assets focused on all parts of a...
Canada has quietly moved from the era of the health care review to the era of the review of postsecondary education. Having digested (or set aside) the recommendations of the Romanow and Kirby commissions, federal and provincial governments have developed an appetite for proposals on how to enhance...
In 2008, research conducted by Omega revealed that high-income families took advantage of Canada’s programs to encourage education savings at four times the rate of lower-income families. The findings also showed that only 16% of eligible Canadian children had received their CLB. In response to...
This report is the second of two complementary reports that address the issue of economic security for Indiana households. The Self-Sufficiency Standard approach to economic security consists of three elements: securing the costs of daily basic needs, creating an emergency savings fund, and...
Enrolled By Six: Peel Post Secondary Strategy is a community impact strategy, rooted in research, to enroll every eligible child in Peel Region in the Canada Learning Bond – Registered Education Savings Plan for post secondary tuition before the age of...
The Postsecondary Education Participation Survey (PEPS) is a new survey designed to collect information on three important themes in postsecondary education: access to, persistence in and financing of postsecondary education. Access looks at characteristics of and barriers faced by those who enrol...
The cost of obtaining a post-secondary education has risen rapidly over the last decade, and that price tag is likely to continue to rise faster than the price of inflation. Numerous academic studies show that the higher future income stream resulting from the investment in a post-secondary...
The federal government’s decision this year to cancel family income splitting and lower the annual contribution limit for tax-free savings accounts was driven largely by concerns about income inequality. Research by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Parliamentary Budget Officer and...