• There is a significant income gap between coupled families and lone-parent families as well as single adults.
• Couple families have consistently higher median after-tax incomes than lone-parent families and single adults.
• Despite overall economic growth, after-tax incomes can stall or even fall during economic downturns such as those experienced during the global financial crisis in 2009 and the recent downturn that caused 2015 family incomes to decline slightly.

Income is perhaps the most important social determinate of health. The level of income affects an individual or family’s ability to access goods and services that shape their living conditions and quality of life. Individuals and families need an income to pay for child care, housing, post-secondary education, healthy food, and out-of-pocket medical costs. Individuals and families with low incomes may face difficulty affording basic necessities and may be at higher risk of poverty and social exclusion.

It is important to consider income against the rising costs of living. When the cost of living increases at a faster rate than incomes, more low- and modest-income families are at risk of poverty.

This data has been collected from external sources and should not always be attributed to ESPC. We would be happy to provide you with a specific reference for the data that you have used. Please click on the text to the right to request sourcing information, report an error or omission, or provide your comments