Adjusted Family Income Brackets

This map colours each region by the mix of of the population in private households in the lower 30%, middle 40%, and upper 30% of the adjusted after-tax economic family income distribution. The base of this map is the population in private households, and it assigns each person a synthetic income based on the after-tax income of the economic family they are in. For individuals not in an economic family, for example an adult living on their own, this is simply the after-tax income of that individual. For a family of 4, each family member gets assigned the "adjusted" income obtained by summing up the income of all family members and dividing the result by 2, the square root of the family size. The idea is that income and expenses are shared within a family, and there are economies of scale. So people in a family of 4 feel roughly as rich or poor as an individual with half the income. We map this data showing the mix of the population in the upper, middle, and lower adjusted family income brackets. Pink areas are dominated by people in the top three income brackets, turquoise areas by people in the middle four income brackets, and beige areas by people in the bottom three income brackets. In most regions there is a mixture of people from all income groups, resulting in dark grey areas in the case of a perfect mixture. As we zoom in to smaller areas we start to see more segregation by income groups, but there is a surprising amount of good mixing even at fine geographies. In Vancouver we note how many census tracts show perfect income mixing, and most others only showing slight tendencies toward polarization. Toronto exhibist somewhat stronger polarization with some well-defined higher income areas. Montréal shows higher income pockets in Mount Royal and Westmount and an overall skew toward more middle-income people. Calgary also shows clear geographic patterns with predominantly higher incomes in upper Mount Royal, Kerrisdale, and western suburbs. and mid to lower income neighbourhoods clustering toward the airport. Halifax exhibits pockets with higher concentration of high-income population toward the south-west end of the penninsula, and overall more income-based polarization. Zoom, pan or user the serach bar to explore other parts of Canada. Compare this to the corresponding map based on 2016 data. Our blog has more background information on adjusted after-tax family income, and the use of this metric to understand the geography of income.

Author: CensusMapper Team

Dataset: CA21