Contents:

In 1999 and 2005, Economica conducted surveys of the cost of providing various household services, such as cooking, cleaning, yard work, and child care. As the results from those surveys have come to be widely accepted by the courts and by other experts in the personal injury field, we felt that it would be appropriate to conduct a new survey. In this issue, we report the results of such a survey, undertaken on our behalf by our assistant, Amelia Lamb.

The Cost of Household Services, Alberta, 2010: A Survey

• Perhaps the most important difference between this survey and the previous two is that whereas the 1999 and 2005 surveys were conducted primarily using telephone and newspapers, the 2010 survey relied almost exclusively on the internet – either Kijiji and Craigslist or agencies’ websites. We found that, with respect to most of the services that we surveyed, costs had risen approximately in line with average increases in wages across the economy.

Factors that Influence Retirement

• In a second article, Derek Aldridge summarises recent research from Statistics Canada concerning factors that influence retirement. He finds support for an assumption that is often made in expert  reports: that a plaintiff with substantial residual deficits will likely retire earlier than he or she would have in the absence of the accident.