Occupational pension plans in Canada

The rate of growth in the number of members in the public sector was almost always greater than that in the private sector. [...] Coverage of paid workers by occupational pension plans As the discussion of the data in Figure 1 has shown, an examination of changes during the past quarter century in the number of members of occupational pension plans indicates a positive trend. [...] The fact that the percentage gains for senior men and for senior women were the same meant that the relative size of the gap between the average amount of pension income received by senior women and that received by senior men was also unchanged. [...] Therefore, to understand the trends in the incomes of senior households in Canada from 1980 to 2004, it is necessary to look at the change in their average real (inflation adjusted) incomes over this period as well as the changes in the percentage that each source of income represents in relation to the total income of senior households. [...] The rise in the average income of senior households was largely due to the increasingly important role played by the two parts of the Canadian retirement income system related to earnings from employment and self-employment – pension income (income from occupational pension plans and RRSPs) on the one hand, and the Canada/Quebec Pension Plan on the other.