Canadian System of Environmental-Economic Accounts - Ecosystem Accounts

Low-income status of person, level

Low-income status refers to the income situation of the statistical unit in relation to a specific low-income line in a reference year. Statistical units with income that is below the low-income line are considered to be in low income.

Person refers to an individual and is the unit of analysis for most social statistics programs.

The data for this variable are reported using the following measurements:

• 'Market Basket Measure (MBM)' refers to Canada's official measure of poverty based on the cost of a specific basket of goods and services representing a modest, basic standard of living. The threshold represents the costs of specified qualities and quantities of food, clothing, footwear, shelter, transportation and other necessities for a reference family of two adults and two children. The square root of economic family size is the equivalence scale used to adjust the MBM thresholds for other family sizes. This adjustment for different economic sizes reflects the fact that an economic family's needs increase, but at a decreasing rate, as the number of members increases.