A new study from Statistics Canada finds that the gap between Canada's richest and poorest has continued to widen.
The results contained in the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics were released Thursday in The Daily, an online StatsCan publication.
The study separated Canadian families into five groups in order to analyze income inequality.
The difference between the top and bottom fifth was $105,400 in 2005 -- an increase of almost one third from a decade ago.
Families in the top fifth brought in an after-tax income of, on average, $128,200 in 2005, while those in the bottom fifth brought in just $22,800, on average, after taxes.
"The gap between the families with the lowest and highest incomes, an indication of income inequality, widened during the past decade. The gap between the top and bottom quintiles started at $83,800 in 1980, and fluctuated between $79,500 and $84,500 until 1996. By 2005, the gap had reached $105,400," the report states.
However, all five segments have seen benefits since the early 1990s, though the top-tier families gained the most.
Most Canadian families see benefits
Most Canadian families saw a slight rise in their after-tax income in 2005, with the median hitting $56,000 after adjusting for inflation.
That's an increase of 1.6 per cent from 2004, and followed a gain of 1.3 per cent during the previous year, according to the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics from Statistics Canada.
Families are defined as having two or more people.
The study also found that after-tax income remained stable for unattached individuals.
Most types of families saw an increase in their after-tax income. However, among families where a senior over 65 was the main income earner, median after-tax income remained almost unchanged at $40,400 in 2005.
Though that number was virtually the same as in 2004, it is still a dramatic increase from 1996, when median income for senior families was 15 per cent lower. StatsCan reports that a five-year upward trend began in 1997, accounting for most of the increase.
For single people -- described as "unattached individuals" in the study and representing about 14 per cent of the Canadian population -- median after-tax income remained stable at $21,400 in 2005.
The percentage of unattached individuals in the population in 2005 was 14 per cent, compared to 11 per cent two decades earlier.
Among seniors living on their own, the median income remained at $19,600, virtually unchanged from 2004.
The number of Canadian families living below the low income threshold also remained unchanged in 2005 at 7.4 per cent of all families -- a percentage representing 655,000 Canadian families.
There were 788,000 Canadian children under 18 living in low-income families, representing 11.7 per cent of the total.
Canadian families gained most of their total income from market income, which is the sum of employment, investment, and private retirement earnings.
For two-parent families with kids, the 2005 median market income was $72,800.
For single moms it was $22,200 -- virtually unchanged from the year previous, but a major increase from 1996 when it hit a 25-year low of $8,600.
Since 1996, StatsCan says, wages have increased along with the proportion of working mothers, accounting for much of the increase.
