Data source for distributions: the Survey of Financial Security
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Annual household distributions of assets, liabilities and net worth in the NBSA are based on the Survey of Financial Security (SFS). The SFS collects information from a sample of Canadian families on their assets, debts, employment, income and education, providing a comprehensive picture of their wealth (net worth). Information is collected on the value of all major financial and non-financial assets and on the money owing on mortgages, vehicles, credit cards, student loans and other debts.
The SFS is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design. It has been conducted on an occasional basis, in 1999, 2005, and 2012, and starting with 2016, it is being undertaken triennially. The SFS covers the population in the ten Canadian provinces. Within the provinces, certain groups are excluded (for instance, persons living on reserves or other Indigenous settlements and chronic care patients living in hospitals or nursing homes), which represent about 2% of the population.
Over the years, the SFS sample size and survey design have varied. For 2012 to 2019, the initial sample size was approximately 20,000 dwellings, rising to 40,000 dwellings for 2023, and the design focused on producing reliable estimates at the provincial level.
Data are generally collected directly from respondents, while in some cases additional information is extracted from administrative files and derived from Statistics Canada surveys and other sources via record linkage. Examples include the use of personal tax data records and regulatory information on the terms and conditions of employer-sponsored pension plans. For the 2023 survey interviews were conducted via a self-completed questionnaire, while earlier survey interviews were conducted via Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI). For all survey years, the average interview length was approximately 45 minutes.
The survey is not mandatory and the response rates rnaged from about 59% to 70% from 2012 to 2019, compared with 43.4% in 2023.
The SFS data used for the DHEA differs slightly from the actual SFS estimates, as they have been reweighted to take into account additional and more relevant population control totals and to reduce the impact of certain outliers.
More information can be found under Definitions, data source and methods for SFS (survey number 2620) and tables 11-10-0016-01, 11-10-0049-01 and 11-10-0057-01.
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