The housing boom has been better for low-income Canadians

While the income gap grew, lower-earning households saw bigger real-estate gains than their richer peers

 

Finally, some encouraging news for the little guy: while the latest StatsCan data shows the income gap between Canada’s poorest and richest widened slightly between 1999 and 2012, lower-income families benefited more from the housing boom. During that period, real estate’s share of total wealth rose to 57% from 46% for households in the bottom 20% income bracket, compared with just a six percentage point rise to 40% for those in the highest-earning quintile.

Chart showing comparative real-estate performance for high- and low-income earners

 

Sources: Changes in wealth across the income distribution, 1999 to 2012, Statistics Canada; Canada’s Wealth Distribution Barely Moves, Moody’s Analytics Research, Adam Goldin.

This post originally appeared at MoneySense.ca.

MORE ABOUT REAL ESTATE & HOUSING MARKETS:

Comments are closed.