For the First Time, Canadians Now Richer Than Americans
While Americans might enjoy throwing politically-charged
barbs at their neighbors to the north, Canadians now have at least one reason
to be smug.
For the first time in recent history, the average
Canadian is richer than the average American, according to a report cited in
Toronto's Globe and Mail.
And not just by a little. Currently, the average Canadian
household is more than $40,000 richer than the average American household. The
net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, compared to
around $320,000 for Americans.
If you're thinking the Canadian advantage must be due to
exchange rates, think again. The Canadian dollar has actually caught up to the
U.S. dollar in recent years.
"These are not 60-cent dollars, but Canadian dollars
more or less at par with the U.S. greenback," Globe and Mail's Michael
Adams writes.
To add insult to injury, not only are Canadians
comparatively better-off than Americans, they're also more likely to be
employed. The unemployment rate is 7.2 percent—and dropping—in Canada, while
the U.S. is stuck with a stubbornly high rate of 8.2 percent.
Besides a strengthening currency and a better labor
market, experts credit the particularly savage fallout from the financial
crisis on the U.S. economy and housing market, which torpedoed home values and
gutted household wealth. According to the report, real estate held by Canadians
is worth more than $140,000 more on average and they have almost four times as
much equity in their real estate investments.
In a column for Bloomberg View, Stephen Marche traces the
increasing wealth spread between the two countries to America's "struggles
to find its way out of an intractable economic crisis and a political sine
curve of hope and despair."
"The Canadian System is working," Marche
writes, crediting Canada's cautious, fiscally conservative society. "[T]he
American system is not."
But there is one caveat that could give the U.S. an ego
boost: the average American holds more liquid assets—cash in hand—than the
average Canadian.
Comments
Post a Comment