This is a semi-custom version of table 11-10-0026-01, providing data at additional levels of geography.
- The low income exit rate at a given duration (one-year, two-year, etc.) is also known as the low income hazard rate, which is a conditional probability that a spell will last for the given duration, conditional on it not having terminated earlier.
- The percent of low income spells that last for one year or longer (or two years or longer, etc.) is also known as the low income survival rate. It is the probability that a low income spell lasts for a given duration or longer.
This table contains statistics that describe the duration of low income spells experienced by Canadian tax filers in an eight-year period. A low income spell refers to a period in which a person stays in low income. It can last one year or several years consecutively. The length of the spell is referred to as its duration. This is different from Table 11-10-0025-01 in which the years in low income are not required to be consecutive.
This table is based on tax filers in the ten provinces who were at least 18 years old and present in each year of the eight-year period, with the following two additional restrictions: (1) Filers must not be in low income in the first year, and (2) they must fall in low income at least once during the next seven years. For region-specific statistics, we also restricted tax filers who stayed in the same region throughout the eight-year period.
Two types of low income measure (LIM) thresholds are used in this table. The variable LIM threshold is re-estimated each year while the fixed LIM threshold is based on median income in 2002 and is adjusted by the all-items Consumer Price Index to account for inflation in other years. For a discussion of the fixed LIM threshold, see Xuelin Zhang (2010): “Low Income Measurement in Canada: What Do Different Lines and Indexes Tell Us?”. Income Research Paper Series, Catalogue no. 75F0002M -- No. 003, Statistics Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.
The low income measure (LIM) is used to identify low income tax filers. The LIM threshold is calculated as half of the median of the adjusted income of all tax filers and their family members. The adjustment is made by dividing the after-tax income by the square root of the census family size. Census family is the only family unit available in the Longitudinal Administrative Databank. Details of the calculation can be found in Murphy, Brian, X. Zhang and C. Dionne. (2010) “Revising Statistics Canada’s Low Income Measure (LIM)”, Income Research Paper Series, Catalogue No. 75F0002M – No. 004, Statistics Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.
The tables ordered were produced using data from the Longitudinal Administrative Databank (LAD). This data source is mainly based on a 20% sample of the T1 Family File (T1FF). In order to maximize the efficiency of the longitudinal aspect of the LAD data, some additional geography processing steps are applied to LAD data. This difference in the geography processing, in addition to differences based on the fact that LAD is a 20% sample of T1FF, can lead to differences in geographical coverage between these two data sources, especially for lower levels of geography such as census subdivisions (CSDs). Hence, a user should expect, on occasion, some notable differences in CSD tax filer counts when comparing data from these sources.