Canada and other countries are changing the age of public pension eligibility. A policy concern that arises is the welfare of those exiting the labour force before the age of pension eligibility. This paper addresses the welfare implications of early retirements by examining who isn’t...

The Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) has contributed significantly to the reduction of senior poverty in Canada, but prospective GIS recipients should think twice at age 64 about making an RRSP contribution. In many cases, the best move may even be withdrawing the whole RRSP. This is because...

In this paper, we use a risk framework to analyze the risks seniors face and discuss the success of Canada’s retirement income system in insuring against these risks. We focus on four types of risk: (i) the risk of low income at the onset of retirement, (ii) longevity risk, (iii) business...

The incomes, hours of work and co-residency behavior of older immigrants in Canada are analyzed using data from the confidential master files of the Canadian Census for the years 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006. Older immigrants in Canada have lower incomes than the Canadian-born of the same age range...

Despite a history built on immigration, immigrants are among those who struggle the most in Canada. Recent research finds that the proportion of recent immigrants (in Canada for 5 years or less) who were in poverty has risen steadily from 24.6% in 1980 to 47% in 1995, before falling to 36% in...

This paper explores impacts of recessions on private pensions and retirement savings in Canada. We estimate that the 2008-09 recession saw declines in average family wealth and retirement assets of 11% and 14% respectively. Average wealth recovered by the end of 2010, but retirement assets...

In this paper I estimate the magnitude of earnings losses faced by workers who are displaced when over the age of 50. This is potentially complicated by the self-selection of older individuals out of the labour force and into activities such as retirement, preventing observation of their...

In this paper we document the economic outcomes of elderly immigrants to Canada. Our objective is to describe the extent to which elderly immigrants may have low income (are “in povertyâ€) and their interactions with the Canadian income transfer system. The study has two main parts....

Data from the 2002 and 1994 General Social Survey are used to analyze the determinants of retiring due to mandatory retirement and the expected age of retirement in Canada. Changes between 1994 and 2002 are decomposed into a component attributable to shifts in the composition of respondents and...