Canada's Retirement Social Contract:
A National Financial Portrait
What You'll Discover
This dashboard reveals patterns across the entire Canadian population, showing not just what Canadians do with their money, but why they do it—and what support they need from our collective institutions to build genuine financial resilience.
The findings paint a portrait of a nation grappling with financial security in an era of economic uncertainty, evolving work patterns, and changing family structures. Some discoveries confirm what we suspected; others challenge fundamental assumptions about how financial wellness actually works in Canadian lives.
Multi-Disciplinary Insights from Across Canada
2,500
Canadians Surveyed
13
Provinces & Territories
4
Research Disciplines
5
Dashboard Sections
Who Benefits from This Research
Policymakers & Government
See how current systems perform in practice, identifying where gaps exist between policy intentions and lived experiences. The data reveals which Canadians our social contract serves well and which populations face systemic barriers.
Pension Plans & Financial Institutions
Gain unprecedented insight into how Canadians actually experience financial decision-making across all life domains. This isn't market research—it's human understanding that can inform genuinely helpful products and services.
Researchers & Academics
Access comprehensive, validated data that bridges individual psychology with population-level patterns. The methodology combines established frameworks with contemporary Canadian realities.
Advocates & Organizations
Ground your work in credible, comprehensive evidence about the financial wellness challenges facing different Canadian populations. The data supports informed advocacy for effective policies and programs.
Policymakers & Government
See how current systems perform in practice, identifying where gaps exist between policy intentions and lived experiences. The data reveals which Canadians our social contract serves well and which populations face systemic barriers.
Pension Plans & Financial Institutions
Gain unprecedented insight into how Canadians actually experience financial decision-making across all life domains. This isn't market research—it's human understanding that can inform genuinely helpful products and services.
Researchers & Academics
Access comprehensive, validated data that bridges individual psychology with population-level patterns. The methodology combines established frameworks with contemporary Canadian realities.
Advocates & Organizations
Ground your work in credible, comprehensive evidence about the financial wellness challenges facing different Canadian populations. The data supports informed advocacy for effective policies and programs.
Navigating the Dashboard
Financial Well-Being
Explores how Canadians experience their current financial situations—from day-to-day money management stress to confidence about meeting long-term goals. This section reveals the often surprising gap between financial circumstances and financial security.
Money Management
Examines the actual behaviors that drive financial outcomes: saving patterns, spending control, investment approaches, and financial planning habits. See how behavioral economics principles play out in real Canadian lives.
Retirement Transition
Goes beyond traditional retirement planning to explore how Canadians at different life stages think about, prepare for, and experience retirement. Captures both the aspiration-reality gap and factors influencing retirement confidence.
Psychographics
Reveals the values, beliefs, and psychological factors that shape financial decision-making. Helps explain why people with similar circumstances often make very different financial choices.
Socio-Demographics
Provides essential context showing how financial wellness varies across age, income, education, geography, employment status, and family structure. Identifies which Canadians face the greatest barriers to financial security.
The Research Behind the Insights
This study combines expertise from sociology, economics, psychology, and finance to examine how demographics, income, wealth, employment status, health concerns, and psychological factors interact with institutional structures to shape retirement outcomes across a nationally representative sample of 2,500 Canadian adults.
Every question was crafted not just to capture behaviors, but to understand the context that shapes them. We moved beyond traditional financial literacy measures to explore how factors like present bias, loss aversion, and social influence affect everything from daily money management to long-term retirement planning. The survey integrates validated measurement tools from leading researchers while adapting them for contemporary Canadian realities.
Why We're Sharing This Openly
Canada’s financial wellness challenges require collective action and shared accountability. By making this research freely available, we aim to strengthen our social contract by providing the evidence needed for informed policy development, institutional innovation, and public discourse.
Too often, important research remains locked behind paywalls or limited to narrow audiences. We believe that understanding how our social contract actually functions should be accessible to everyone who has a stake in its success—which means all Canadians.
This transparency reflects our conviction that effective financial policy and institutional design must be grounded in genuine understanding of human behavior as it unfolds in the complexity of real lives. These multi-disciplinary insights can serve as a foundation for evidence-based solutions that help millions of Canadians managing their financial lives.
About fuse Strategy Partners
fuse is a research-driven strategy firm partnering with pensions, investors, and policymakers to improve risk-taking and retirement outcomes. We provide capability-building advisory services to our clients, equipping changemakers to design and deliver the modernization journey.
Using This Data
This research is made freely available for public benefit—we encourage its use for policy development, academic research, and public discourse. Please cite as “2024 Annual Financial Survey, fuse Strategy Partners.”
Ready to Explore the Data?
Dive into the interactive dashboard to discover how Canada’s retirement social contract is working in practice.
