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Financial well-being

Domain

Prosperity

Subdomain

Economic security and deprivation

Indicator

Financial well-being


Definition

Percentage of persons living in households by level of difficulty in meeting their financial needs in terms of transportation, housing, food, clothing, and other necessary expenses.


Measurement

The financial well-being indicator in the Quality of Life Framework is based on a household's own assessment of its ability to meet its financial needs in terms of transportation, housing, food, clothing, and other necessary expenses. In the Quality of Life Framework, the financial well-being indicator captures the subjective (or perceived) financial well-being of Canadians, whereas the poverty indicator is an objective measure based on whether a family's income falls below a specified poverty line.

This indicator is measured in selected iterations of the Canadian Social Survey (CSS), the Survey Series on People and their Communities (SSPC), and in the Canadian Housing Survey (CHS). Survey respondents are asked:

In the past 12 months, how difficult or easy was it for your household to meet its financial needs in terms of transportation, housing, food, clothing, and other necessary expenses? Would you say:

  • Very difficult
  • Difficult
  • Neither difficult nor easy
  • Easy
  • Very easy

This indicator has also been collected in selected iterations of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) through its supplement, on a monthly basis from April 2020 to June 2021 and in October 2022. In the LFS, respondents were asked to report on their level of difficulty in the past month.


Data sources


Data analysis

Frameworks

This indicator aligns with the following framework:

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