2016 census drops income and benefits over faulty data given data to come from CRA
2016/02/10 2 Comments
Good change and use of existing and more accurate data:
When Canadians receive their census questionnaires this May, they’ll no longer be asked to report their income and benefits — something Statistics Canada says produced subpar data.
“To substantially reduce the burden on Canadians, and improve the quality of income data compared to previous censuses, Statistics Canada will use income and benefits data from the Canada Revenue Agency for all census respondents to replace questions previously asked on the 2011 National Household Survey questionnaire,” a recently-published order-in-council explained.
Aside from the return of the mandatory component of the long-form census, which Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains announced the day after being sworn in last November, the 2016 Census of Population will essentially mirror the 2011 National Household Survey.
“There are no new questions on the short or long form. To ensure comparability over time, with the exception of two changes, questions asked by the Census of Population will remain the same as they were in 2011,” a Statistics Canada agency spokesperson told iPolitics.
“First, the question on religion will not be included as the census program has asked this question only every 10 years since 1871. Second, in order to reduce the time required and make it easier for Canadians to respond, income questions will be replaced with more precise tax and benefit data that have been available to Statistics Canada since 1985.”
The latter change is welcomed by Philip Cross, formerly the chief economic analyst at the agency.
When asked about it, Cross referred to a paper he wrote with Munir Sheikh — the head of Statistics Canada who resigned in the wake of the Harper government’s decision end the long-form census in 2010.
That paper, published by the University of Calgary school of public policy last March, attempted to assess the extent of the middle class plight dominating the Canadian political discourse.
And one problem it highlighted was the “disquieting” difference between what people reported as income when surveyed, as in the census, and the tax data reported by the Canada Revenue Agency.
In a nutshell, Canadians were underestimating their income.
“One reason households routinely underestimate their income in surveys is they respond as if only wages and salaries are income, ignoring the growing importance of supplementary benefits such as employer contributions to pensions or health care that are included in taxable benefits,” Cross and Sheikh wrote.
Supplementary income, they added, had risen to over 13 per cent of all labour income.
“Most of these benefits accrue to middle-income earners, something that should be taken account of when examining how their real income has fared in survey data. As well, surveys exclude irregular sources of income, such as bonuses or stock options,” they wrote.
“Income tax data are less timely but more complete.”
Will miss the religion question but it has always been on a 10-year cycle.
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
I would suggest that the Income section was not the only statistically flawed area. I talked to several people who involuntarily filled out the long term census, including my wife, as I refused to participate. All of these people declined to answer the health questions, fudged some of the home questions and more or less took a pass on anything they saw as an intrusion of privacy.
The long term census annoys a lot of people who fill it out for fear of being fined or jailed, and who just want to protect their privacy. This produces major statistical error in the results so the data is not as pure as the Statscan bureauocrats want, and can be very misleading. So why bother if it is being compiled for sociological research and has no impact on private sector decision making. The market economy will do just fine without the long term data. Just do the short form census.
On the subject of security of data, think Wikileaks and Snowden. The statscan data is not secure from insiders or highly skilled hackers. Only an arrogant fool would make that claim. Do I really want my address attached to my name, phone number, email address with this long term census trove of information in the hands of people committing the like of identity theft just to keep a bunch of bureaucrats happily employed. No.
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Census data is also used by private sector to plan locations and expansion. Without data on the number of refusals or questions not answered, your comment on the validity of data is more of the nature of an assertion, rather than the evidence.
We will see what the overall response rate is for the Census. It will certainly be higher than for the NHS, but data on questions not answered would be of interest.