From the pre-pandemic year of 2019 to 2023, the purchasing power of Quebec households improved “in a majority of cases”, reveals a report from the Research Chair in Taxation and Public Finance at the University of Sherbrooke made public on Wednesday.
The three researchers analyzed different situations of Quebec households to determine their purchasing power, which means the “capacity to purchase goods and services that a person or a group of people provides with all of their income or of his availability. The categories observed in the study are those of single people, couples without children, couples with children, single-parent families, single people aged 65 to 69, single people aged 70 and over, senior couples aged 65 to 69 and senior couples aged 70 and over.
Three income levels — modest, median and high — were then examined for each of the eight categories. “When we look at that, there are 21 of the 24 situations where purchasing power has improved,” notes Luc Godbout, full professor at the University of Sherbrooke and principal researcher at the Research Chair in Taxation and public finances. “We do not deny that people are feeling budgetary difficulties as well as inflation. But we can still rejoice when we look at this data,” he says.
Only single-parent families with a modest income and those with a median income, as well as single people aged 65 to 69 saw their purchasing power deteriorate in 2023 compared to 2019.
This could be explained by the fact that salaries for these types of households “would increase less quickly than the cost of living,” says Suzie St-Cerny, researcher at the Research Chair in Taxation and Public Finance at the University. from Sherbrooke.
In the case of single seniors aged 65 to 69, they “often have no salary and private pension income is not indexed,” adds Mr. Godbout.
Further details will follow.