gambling in alberta - Research Services - University of Lethbridge

Table 37: Household Past Year Reported Expenditure on Gambling in Canada by
Household Income Group in 2008.
Average Household Gambling as a % of Total
Household Income
% who
Gamble
Gambling Expenditure
All
Households
Households
that Gamble
All
Households
Income
Households
that Gamble
Less than $20,000 51% $200 $395 1.5% 2.8%
$20,000 to $39,999 66% $330 $500 1.1% 1.7%
$40,000 to $59,999 73% $345 $475 0.7% 1.0%
$60,000 to $79,999 77% $305 $390 0.4% 0.6%
$80,000 and over 78% $430 $555 0.4% 0.5%
AVERAGE 70% $335 $480 0.5% 0.6%
Source: Statistics Canada, Survey of Household Spending.
On the other hand, earlier research (Table 22a, p. 111) has also documented that the roughly
6% of people who contribute 75% of reported Alberta gambling revenue tend to be in
somewhat higher income brackets compared to the general population. Thus, a more detailed
examination of Alberta gambling expenditure as a function of income group is warranted.
The primary source of data on gambling expenditure comes from the population surveys. Table
38 presents the combined data from the 2008 and 2009 Alberta population surveys (i.e.,
General Population + Online + Targeted Samples) that contain reports from 12,587 adult
Albertans (N = 15,166 minus 2,579 missing cases for people who did not report income).
Aggregate personal monthly expenditure on all government-sponsored gambling (i.e.,
everything except Internet gambling, social gambling, and gambling on high risk stocks), was
determined for individuals in each income group and multiplied by 12 to produce a yearly
amount.
Results are similar to what was found with the Canadian Survey of Household Spending, in that
people in higher income brackets spend proportionately less of their income on gambling than
do people in lower income brackets. 68 However, the highest average expenditure occurs in
people within the highest income bracket (although the second highest average occurs in the <
$20,000 income group). Further to this point, although gambling in Alberta is clearly regressive,
the last column of Table 38 shows that the majority of total reported gambling expenditure
(52.5%) comes from people with higher than average incomes (i.e. > $50,000) (median personal
income in 2008 in Alberta was $35,550 69 ). It is also important to recognize that Table 37 shows
that average gambling expenditure is many times higher than median expenditure because of a
68 It is worth remembering that lower income people spend proportionally more of their income on most
consumer products compared to higher income people.
69 Statistics Canada Table 111-0008. Individuals by Total Income Level, by Province and Territory.
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