More than 1 in 10 Canadians living below the poverty line: Statistics Canada

A new report by Statistics Canada released on Wednesday revealed that more than one in 10 Canadians lived below the poverty line in 2024, with little improvement from the previous year.

According to the latest figures, 11.0% of Canadians, approximately 4.5 million people, lived below the poverty line in 2024, barely changed from 11.1% in 2023.

Canada’s Indigenous peoples were nearly twice as likely to be living in poverty as non-Indigenous Canadians, at a rate of 18.1% compared with 10.6%, the report showed.

Among racialized groups, nearly one in five Chinese Canadians lived in poverty at 19.0%, followed by Black Canadians at 16.4% and South Asian Canadians at 14.2%.

The poverty rate for seniors aged 65 and over fell to 5.4% in 2024, down from 5.9% the previous year, as both pension income and government support payments increased.

The data also showed that Canada’s far north fared the worst regionally, with the territory of Nunavut recording a poverty rate of 31.7%. The French-speaking province of Quebec had the lowest rate among Canada’s provinces at 7.0%, down 0.7 percentage points from 2023.

The median after-tax income for Canadian families and unattached individuals was $75,500 in 2024, virtually unchanged from the previous year after adjusting for inflation.