Intercensal Annual Estimates of Population by Marital Status, Age and Sex for Canada and the Provinces

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

Every five years, the census provides information on the age, sex, and marital status of the Canadian population. Each year after a census, Statistics Canada also produces postcensal estimates based on the latest census data. At the end of the five-year period, with two official censuses in hand, these postcensal estimates are replaced by yearly intercensal estimates, which are more compatible with official data.

The agency acknowledges that all its data are subject to a certain margin of error, the intercensal estimates, of course, more so than data collected officially. Indeed, this booklet includes a table estimating undercoverage rates by sex and marital status in the 1976 and 1981 census years.

The main section of this booklet contains yearly tables, by province, enumerating the population by age, sex, and marital status. Also included are a number of subsidiary tables based on the data collected — for example, changes in the distribution of males and females by marital status, 1976-1981. Most interesting figure: the rise in the number of divorces: between those two dates, the number of divorcees rose from 1.8 per cent of the population to about 2.7 per cent — a growth of 65.3 per cent.

Clearly the booklet will be of considerable interest to university researchers, social planners, and to some law students wavering between real estate and family law, assuming of course, that trends evident in the latter half of the 1970s have continued until the present.