Top 1% of Canadian Families Hold Nearly a Quarter of National Wealth: PBO Report

The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) has released an update in its 2023 High-net-worth Families Database (HFD), showing that wealth in Canada remains highly concentrated. Parliamentary Budget Officer

Here are the key findings:

• The top 1% of Canadian economic families hold 24% of the country’s total net wealth.

• The top 10% hold 53%, and the top 20% hold 69% of net wealth.

• In 2023, there were about 169,400 families in the top 1%, each with net wealth of at least CAD $7.4 million.

• That number is projected to have grown to 176,800 families with net wealth of at least $7.5 million by the last quarter of 2024. 

Additional details:

• While 4.4 million families had net wealth above $1 million, and 108,000 families exceeded $10 million, only about 100 families had net wealth of $1 billion or more in 2023.

• Families with over $1 billion collectively owned about 2.2% of Canada’s wealth — approximately $360 billion. 

On asset breakdown:

• The top 5% of economic families held about 29.3% of net wealth. 

• Among them, they held 6.4% of Canada’s financial assets (excluding pensions), 5.1% of pension assets, 14% of non-financial assets, 5.7% of business equity, and 1.8% of the country’s debt. 

Report’s caveats:

• There is sampling uncertainty: the survey data (SFS) often underrepresent the very wealthiest families. The PBO uses methods like Pareto interpolation and combines rich lists (Forbes, Maclean’s) to better estimate the top tail. 

• The trend indicates a slight decline in top‑1% wealth share since 2019 in some datasets, but results vary depending on which supplemental rich lists are included. Wealth Professional

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