(Bloomberg) -- One group feels particularly good about Canada’s economy — older citizens.
Consumer sentiment among those 60 and over hit its highest level in more than two years last week, according to the Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index. The index for that cohort rose to 57.7, the highest reading since February 2022. A reading above 50 indicates net positive views about the economy.
Older Canadians are now reporting better sentiment than they have in nearly 90% of all polls conducted since the survey began in 2008. In contrast, those between the ages of 18 and 29 reported some of the worst scores. That group’s sentiment registered as worse last week than in two-thirds of all polls.
The generational economic divide is playing out in the political arena. Young people, who helped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau win a majority in 2015, are leaving his Liberal Party in droves. Older Canadians now form the bedrock of Liberal support, though the Conservatives are the most popular party among all age groups.
Opposition parties are trying to win over senior voters. The Bloc Quebecois, a francophone separatist party, has threatened to start talks with other parties on forcing an election if Trudeau doesn’t boost cash payments to people aged 65 to 74 by Oct. 29.
The Conservatives voted in favor of the Bloc’s motion calling for a 10% boost to Old Age Security for younger seniors. It’s a broad-based program — 7.4 million people received the payment in September, or more than nine in 10 people over 65.
The typical senior household in Canada has a net worth over C$1 million ($724,250), according to Statistics Canada. The wealthiest cohort in the country is a touch younger: between the ages of 55 to 64, households had a typical net worth of C$1.6 million as of the second quarter.
Every week, Nanos surveys about 250 Canadians for their views on the economy. Bloomberg publishes four-week rolling averages of the 1,000 telephone responses. The poll has a margin of error of about 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The range of error may be wider when talking about subsets of the overall population because the sample size is smaller.
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