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We were commissioned by Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) to conduct a survey of beneficiaries of CPP Surviving Spouse’s Pensions. The purpose was threefold:

1. To determine what proportion of total household income is represented by the Spouse’s Pension (and Orphan’s Benefit, as well, where applicable).

2. To describe the characteristics of beneficiaries in terms of attributes not available through CPP administrative data—for example, marital status, whether they own their home free of mortgage, and whether they received a life insurance benefit on the death of a spouse.

3. To obtain the opinions of current beneficiaries with respect to a number of policy alternatives relating mainly to eligibility for the Surviving Spouse’s Pension.

The respondents to this survey are derived from an attempted census of all panelists in Canadian Facts’ Canadian Family Opinion (CFO) Panel who indicated in a survey sent to all 22,000 panelists in January 1996 that they were in receipt of a CPP Surviving Spouse’s Pension. The CFO Panel is a continuously-maintained panel broadly representative of Canadians across the country who participate, from time to time, in self-complete questionnaire surveys on a variety of subjects.

A total of 1,153 questionnaires were mailed. As a result of the process of qualification of respondents as being within the target population (see Questions 1a and b), 116 panelists indicated that they did not qualify. Of the remainder (whom we will call qualifiers), 38 provided information that was so incomplete that it was not useable; 158 did not respond; and 841 responded with complete or virtually complete questionnaires. The response rate from qualifiers was, therefore, 81%. Canadian Facts offered an incentive (a "final lucky draw" for prizes) for those who qualified to complete the questionnaire and who completed it.

Careful edit checks were made on the household income data to ensure that data reported on survivor benefits (or, in some cases, SB plus Orphan’s Benefits) did not exceed stated program maxima. The data were then weighted to adjust by age and sex within region to the known population of Beneficiaries of the Surviving Spouse’s Pension as recorded in CPP Administrative data reports, by age and sex within province, March 1996.

The main effect of the weighting was (a) to increase the number of males (to 93 from an unweighted n of 41) and to reduce the number of females from 800 to 748 (weighted) and (b) to decrease the number of younger female recipients and increase the number of those over 74 years of age.

Exhibit 1 compares the demographic characteristics of respondents to Statistics Canada’s 1987 survey with the results of the CFO panel survey.

The 1996 survey respondents have more education and some of this difference will be due to cohort effects. However, we have concluded the CFO data over-represent survivors with higher education levels.

EXHIBIT 1 Profiles of CPP Survivors—1987 and 1996 Surveys—Totals

Characteristics		1987 Statistics Canada Survey	1996 CPO Survey
		%	%
Age	Under 45	5.6	4.7
	45-64	34.2	25.2
	65 and over	60.2	71.2
Gender	Male	7.5	11.1
	Female	92.5	88.9
Marital Status	Married/common law	4.4	11.4
	Other	95.6	88.6
Children	Yes	10.5	8.1
	None	89.5	91.9
Education	Elementary of less	36.5	27.0
	Secondary	45.4	45.2
	Post-secondary	17.0	25.9
	Other	1.1	1.9
Dwelling	Own, with mortgage	12.0	9.5
	Own, with no mortgage	49.7	71.2
	Rented	21.3	17.3
	Other/not stated	17.0	2.0