Median after-tax income for Canadian households barely budged in 2015, but the proportion of households living in poverty rose, as did reliance on Canada Pension Plan (CPP) benefits, according to a report published on Friday by Statistics Canada.

The Canadian Income Survey, 2015 finds that median after-tax income of both Canadian families and single people was $56,000 in 2015 — virtually unchanged from 2014.

So-called senior families, where the highest income earner was over 65 years old, had a median after-tax income of $57,500 in 2015, whereas solo seniors had a median after-tax income of $26,300.

For two-parent families with children, the median after-tax income was $94,200, while single-parent families earned less than half of that ($45,700).

Almost five million people, or 14.2% of the population, lived in low income in 2015 (defined as less than half of the median income), according to the report, up 1.2 percentage points from 2014. Just over one million children, 15.2%, lived in low income in 2015. Among families headed by single mothers, 38.2% of children are living in low income.

Among seniors, 32.0% of solo seniors are defined as low income, compared with just 7.7% of those that are part of a family. In both cases, those rates have been rising since 2012.

Average total family income (income from all sources including market income or government transfers) was $82,600 in 2015, the report says. It adds that “there has been a significant shift in the sources contributing to total income, away from earnings towards private retirement income and government transfers,” over the past 60 years.

For example, income from employment accounted for nearly 90% of total income in Canada in 1951, the report notes. This share dropped to just over 72% in 2015. Over the same period, retirement income rose from 1% in 1951 to nearly 8% in 2015, and, government transfers (such as CPP/QPP benefits) increased from 5% to almost 13%.

From 1976 to 2015, the share of income received from CPP and QPP benefits rose five fold, from 0.7% to 3.9% of total income, the report says. As well, the proportion of families receiving CPP/QPP benefits ub 2015 more than tripled from 1976 (10.5% in 1976 compared with 32.6% in 2015).