This map computes the Gini coefficient based on the 2015 after tax household income in each area. Compare this to the corresponding map based on 2010 income data and based on 2005 income data.

Please refer to our methods of estimating the GINI coefficient at the bottom. Due to an increasing number of of people in higher income brackets our estimates are becoming quite sensitive to assumptions on the distribution in the open-ended top bracket.

On a national or provincial level the Gini coefficient can be viewed as a measure of economic inequality.

When zooming into smaller regions, an increasing Gini coefficient can be interpreted as a measure of segregation.

For more information on the Gini coefficient see the excellent overview by Our World In Data.

Definitions

We compute the Gini using the after tax household income brackets. We make the simplifying assumption that the income in each bracket is concentrated at the middle of the income bracket. For the top income bracket we use the average income in each region to make inferences about the average income in the top income bracket. With the top after tax income bracket starting at $150k, and 8.2% of Canadian households in this bracket, the measure becomes somewhat sensitive to the assumptions being made. This is in particular true for regions like Metro Calgary, where almost 20% of households are in the top bracket.

We grey out areas where household income information is not available, when we detect large statistical rounding in the data that might effect accuracy or when we detect that our assumptions on the income distribution lead to larger distortions.