Editing Openai/694c32ff-4db8-8006-a42d-34dfb80b14ea (section)

==== 4. Costs that hit lower brackets hardest (housing & essentials) ====

CPI is an average. Two big categories that matter most for the lower brackets have grown faster than CPI: taxfairness.ca<ref>{{cite web|title=taxfairness.ca|url=https://www.taxfairness.ca/en/resources/reports/canadas-affordability-divide-how-1s-rise-left-millions-behind|publisher=taxfairness.ca|access-date=2025-12-25}}</ref>
* Shelter share of budgets: - 1982: shelter ≈ 23.4% of an average household’s consumption. - 2019: ≈ 29.3%. - 2021: ≈ 31.4% overall, and about 35% for the bottom-quintile households.
* Residential property prices: - House prices ~10× higher in 2022 than in 1982. - That’s about four times faster than the after-tax income growth of the bottom half; only the top 0.01% have seen income growth on the same scale as house prices. taxfairness.ca<ref>{{cite web|title=taxfairness.ca|url=https://www.taxfairness.ca/en/resources/reports/canadas-affordability-divide-how-1s-rise-left-millions-behind|publisher=taxfairness.ca|access-date=2025-12-25}}</ref>
* Recent wage vs inflation (2019–2024): - From May 1981 to May 2024, median real hourly wages rose only about 20%, and most of that was after 2003. Statistics Canada<ref>{{cite web|title=Statistics Canada|url=https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-631-x/11-631-x2025003-eng.htm|publisher=Statistics Canada|access-date=2025-12-25}}</ref> - Recent StatCan work shows that from 2019–2022 wages grew only slightly faster than CPI overall, but for many workers (e.g., hospitality), wage growth lagged prices, eroding purchasing power. Statistics Canada<ref>{{cite web|title=Statistics Canada|url=https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/1615-income-meet-inflation|publisher=Statistics Canada|access-date=2025-12-25}}</ref>

So even where real incomes for the bottom 50–90% are slightly positive over 40 years, core costs like housing, rent and food have eaten up a larger slice of those incomes, particularly in the lower “brackets.”