What is high net worth in Canada ?

Stats Canada is an excellent and perhaps one of the most reliable sources to gather information about the Canadian economy. This write-up breaks down the wealth of Canadians in 2019 by different dimensions based on the Survey of Financial Security and gives you an opportunity to stack yourself against your peers by age, quintile, and province. This blog post will help you identify what is high net worth in Canada Disclaimer that the the data provided by Stats Canada focused on the median household net worth rather than the average. Median in statistics represents a middle number in series of numbers sorted in an ascending or descending format. The average could be skewed higher by outliers while the median reflects a more accurate representation of an ‘average’ Canadian households.

Median Canadian household net worth was $329K in 2019. This was 5.6% higher than the median Canadian household net worth of $312K in 2016. 

Segmenting by Age

While the age group under 35 had the lowest median household net worth, this group had the highest % increase in net worth relative to 2016. While the percent increase seems high, the absolute dollar difference between the two years is about $11.5K. This makes sense as this group would include Canadians and New Immigrants that completed an education and potentially have a higher student debt. This could also include first time home buyers who have recently purchased or are just starting to build equity in their homes.

Age group 45 to 54 had the next best change in the median household net worth – an increase of almost 14% from 2016. This group could consist of Canadians in established/higher paying jobs who also have built some serious equity in their primary residence. This group could also likely be investing at a higher rate to save money for their retirement.

Quintile Households by Net Worth

A quintile denotes 20% of the sample.

• The first quintile represents Canadians (with assets or debts) with the lowest median Net Worth of $3K.
•  The middle quintile represents Canadians with a Net Worth of $329K which was also the Median value we observed in our assessment by Age.
• The fifth quintile had a median Net Worth of $1.8 Million which is more than 5.5 times the median Net Worth country wide

Segmenting by Province

Ontario and British Columbia had the highest median Net Worth in 2019 at $434.5K and $423.7K. This is quite understandable as these two provinces had (have) the most expensive real estate across the country. These provinces also have a very proportion of its population in urban areas (CMAs like Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Hamilton, Waterloo, London, Victoria etc.) where household incomes and real estate value is likely much higher compared to the rest of the country.

In Conclusion

It would be very interesting to analyze how households net worth changed post the pandemic.

A different study by Stats Canada revealed that non-Mortgage household debt declined as savings increased across the country. The group that benefited the most was the one with lower credit ratings. Would this translate to a higher net worth for the first quintile? At the same time, single family home prices have increased exponentially in 2020 and 2021. It would be interesting to see the impact this has on the median Net Worth across the same dimensions.

I am already looking forward to part 2 of this analysis. You can refer to the now archived page from the Stats Canada page here.