OTTAWA -
Statistics Canada says household net worth declined by $72 billion, or 1.3 per cent, in the first quarter as falling real estate values and stock market woes continued to erode assets.
But the agency says the rate of decline has slowed from the last two quarters of 2008, in which cumulative losses totalled $438 billion.
The drop in Canada in the first quarter this year was only half the decline recorded in the United States.
As a percentage of personal disposable income, household net worth has fallen faster in the United States than in Canada since the third quarter of 2007.
Canadians cut their borrowing in the first quarter - especially in new mortgages - and growth in debt slowed to less than one per cent.
The federal government's credit market debt, however, rose 10.5 per cent in the first quarter, after rising a record 14.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2008.
