VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Canada's economy has doubled in size since 1976 but Canadian parents are raising families with less money and time than baby boomers had, researchers say.

Paul Kershaw, a family policy expert from the University of British Columbia, and a team of researchers with the Human Early Learning Partnership have created reports for each province in Canada, comparing the cost of living, household incomes and services available to families today with those during the 1970s.


The research exposes a troubling trend -- while the current generation of parents struggles to raise young families, retiring baby boomers have higher incomes and more wealth as the housing market has nearly doubled over their adult lives, Kershaw said.

"What we're seeing is something I call generation squeeze," Kershaw said in a statement. "The generation raising young kids today is squeezed for time at home, squeezed for income because of the high cost of housing, and squeezed for services like child care that would help them balance earning a living with raising a family."

Kershaw and colleague Lynell Anderson found the average household income for young Canadian couples has flat-lined since the mid-1970s (after adjusting for inflation), even though the share of young women contributing to household incomes today is up 53 percent.

While household incomes have stalled, generation squeeze is simultaneously struggling with the costs of living because housing prices increased 76 percent across the country, the study said.