For much of the twentieth century, Canadians believed a simple promise: if you worked hard, your children would live better than you did, a promise that is quickly fading.
Statistics Canada estimates that up to 67 per cent of children born between 1970 and 1984 earned more than their parents by adulthood. Today, only a third of Canadians have surpassed their parent’s wealth. So, what changed?
Nowhere is the climb steeper than in Canadian cities where tuition, rent, and daily needs cost more than wages suggest they should. While opportunities remain, the barriers to achieving them have grown significantly compared to other generations.
One small but revealing example illustrates how much the structure of opportunity has changed: the need for the Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP), introduced in 1974.
Nowadays, most Canadian households begin saving for their children’s post-secondary education almost as soon as they are born. RESPs allow families to invest money tax-free for education while receiving government contributions through the Canada Education Savings Grant, which adds 20 per cent to annual contributions. It’s estimated that while on a significant upward incline, approximately 85 per cent of Canadian children with education savings had a RESP, and at the end of 2024, RESP total assets across the country reached their highest at $89.8 billion.
The existence of this system demonstrates a widely accepted reality that paying for higher education now requires long-term financial planning.
“Back then,” costs looked different. In 1976, the average undergraduate tuition fee in Ontario was approximately $750 CAD per year. Today, average Canadian undergraduate tuition is about $7,734 CAD per year, where in Ontario, it exceeds $8,704 CAD annually. Even after adjusting for inflation, tuition has more than doubled in real terms since the 1970s.
Higher education remains one of the most important pathways to current economic mobility, but the cost of enrollment has risen faster than most can manage.
Housing presents an even clearer example of how the economic landscape has shifted.
In 1980, the average Canadian home cost roughly three to four times the average household income. Today, that ratio has stretched dramatically. According to the Canadian Real Estate Association, national home prices surpassed $717,800 CAD in 2024, while the median household income in Canada sits at approximately $74,200 CAD. In major cities like Vancouver and Toronto, the gap is even larger.
In Toronto, the average home price has exceeded $1.1 million, making it one of the least affordable housing markets in North America. For young people entering the workforce, purchasing a home depends not only on income but on family wealth. A 2023 CIBC report found that nearly 30 per cent of first-time homebuyers in Canada received financial assistance from their parents, with the average parental gift exceeding $115,000 CAD.
The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive (FTHBI) was introduced in the 2019 Budget for this reason. While it’s a step in the right direction, the bandages are layered, but the cause of the wound is never addressed.
In Kingston, housing affordability has deteriorated significantly in recent years. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment reached roughly $2,300 CAD per month in 2024, representing a substantial increase from previous decades. Meanwhile, the after-tax income for Ontarians aged 25 to 34 is approximately $41,000 CAD annually. For many young adults, rent alone consumes more than half of their yearly income.
These rising costs shape opportunities long before students graduate.
Sociologist Robert Putnam argues that growing inequality in childhood experiences plays a major role in shaping adult outcomes. Children from higher-income families are far more likely to have access to extracurricular activities, like tutoring and mentorship opportunities—resources that nurture personal growth through engagement rather than passive downtime. These chances help form both resilience and connections, guided by what sociologists call the “idle hands” theory, where doing leads to becoming.
Neighbourhood inequality also plays a role. Families increasingly cluster in communities based on income, and elementary and secondary schools often reflect those divisions. Schools in wealthier neighbourhoods tend to have more academic resources, stronger extracurricular programs, and greater parental involvement or collective efficacy. Schools in lower-income communities frequently face greater resource constraints and fewer opportunities outside the classroom.
A growing divide emerges in what researchers describe as social capital. Those connections, advising relationships, and causal support systems guide youth through learning and corporate pathways.
These implications extend beyond individual life outcomes. Rising inequality also affects Canada’s economy and democracy. The wealthiest 20 per cent of Canadian families now hold over two-thirds of the country’s net wealth, while the bottom 40 per cent hold less than 3 per cent. As wealth becomes increasingly concentrated, economic opportunities become less evenly distributed.
Canada has long taken pride in being a country where opportunity is relatively accessible. International comparisons still show that Canada has a higher social mobility than many other developed countries. Yet the structural pressures facing young Canadians today suggest that maintaining this advantage cannot be taken for granted.
Previous generations benefited from major public investments that expanded opportunity. Public education systems, post-war housing construction, and expanded access to universities helped create the broad and clustered middle-class that defined most of the twentieth century.
Programs like the RESP and FTHBI are presented as solutions that help Canadians prepare for the future. Yet their existence also serves as a reminder of how much of the system itself has changed.
The challenge facing Canada today isn’t encouraging young people to work harder but ensuring that the factors that make hard work pay off still exist. When opportunity becomes dependent on family wealth rather than effort, the promise that each generation will do better than the last begins to fade.
Grace O’Marra is a fourth-year History student and Co-Chair of The Queen’s Undergraduate Conference on Literature.
Tags
Canada, Financial insecurity, housing insecurity, Opinions, student finances, wealth
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