The database

For the most part, microdata collected by different statistical surveys and various administrative procedures were designed for specific purposes. No one dataset from a given survey or administrative source provides a sufficiently detailed and integrated picture of Canadian households to support the analysis of costs and distributional impacts of the entire tax/transfer system as it moderates the flows of money between governments and individuals. The SPSD is the only such integrated database in Canada.

The SPSD was constructed by combining individual administrative data from personal income tax returns and unemployment claimant histories with survey data on family incomes, employment and expenditure patterns. The techniques used to create the database and avoid confidential data disclosure include various forms of categorical matching and stochastic imputation. While no one record on the database contains information for the same individual from the four bases, the database has been constructed in such a way as to provide a micro-statistically representative sample of Canadians.

Certain adjustments have been made to the data which force agreement between data and known control totals. For example, survey weights have been adjusted to ensure that the population by age and sex corresponds to Census data, and the number of high income Canadians corresponds to the number reported by Canada Revenue Agency. Further adjustments have been made to compensate for item non-response in the surveys (e.g. to increase the number of families receiving Employment Insurance). It should be noted that the SPSD coverage does not extend to the Yukon, the Nunavut or Northwest Territories, persons residing on reservations, or armed forces personnel residing in barracks.

Also included in the SPSD package are effective tax rates, including sales taxes, derived from data from Statistics Canada's Input/Output tables. These rates support the commodity tax model which facilitates the analysis of changes in commodity taxes on Canadian households and individuals.