Census needs to reflect modern reality about gender | Toronto Star

2016/05/07 Leave a comment

I am sure StatsCan is already thinking about this in the context of the 2021 Census and the best means to do so (may just be an “other” category:

After 10 years, the long-form Canadian census is back. Young Canadians, primed by a decade of digital media saturation, flocked online in droves so large we took down the website.

It makes sense — and it’s not just false enthusiasm as we collectively do our duty because “it’s the law.” A generation used to sharing its descriptive statistics online (finding friends, networking, dating) would intuitively understand the benefit of the census. Understanding the sociodemographic landscape helps us know and better service ourselves. And after all, that’s what millennials want: a fairer and more representative social democracy.

Yet, as Canadians fill out the census, some gawk at the glaring anachronism of the gender binary, the idea that there are two mutually exclusive genders: males and females, who occupy distinct cultural, social, and sexual roles.

But we know this isn’t true. The recent media awakening to transgender people (Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner, Jazz Jennings) is evidence that gender variance has gone mainstream.

If we recognize men and women who identify with the genders they were assigned at birth (cisgender) and we recognize men and women who do not identify with their assigned gender (transgender), then surely we agree this difference is worth recording.

As my friend quipped, “Well, they’re not asking about gender. They’re asking about sex!” His point reflects the growing awareness about gender as the patterns of behaviour and expression associated with its respective sex categories. This is good. It shows a recognition of people whose self-concepts do not match the gender assigned them at birth.

…Despite a variety of new ways to capture gender variation in the population, this simple two-step approach takes us miles further than the two-option approach of the 2016 Census:

  1. Do you identify with the gender you were assigned at birth? Yes / No / Not sure / Prefer not to say
  2. Please indicate your current gender: Male, Female, Non-Binary, Intersex, Other (please describe):

As the 2016 census has done with its categories for race, we must open up how we assess gender. I know it seems hard, but let’s no longer pretend we cannot do better.

Source: Census needs to reflect modern reality about gender | Toronto Star

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StatsCan — Reasons for not voting in the federal election, October 19, 2015

2016/02/24 Leave a comment

Voter Turnout 2015-2011 Elections.001Good overview. Overall striking that turnout rates for longer-term foreign-born citizens are virtually identical to the Canadian-born, and that the gap between more recent citizens shrunk between elections, perhaps reflecting opposition to a number of the citizenship and immigration changes made by the previous government.

Extract from the StatsCan report below:

By immigrant status, the largest increase was among immigrant Canadians with citizenship who had been in Canada for 10 years or less, as their turnout rate went up from 56% to 70%. The turnout rate for immigrant Canadians with citizenship who had been in Canada for more than 10 years increased from 71% to 76%. Among Canadian-born citizens, the rate also increased, up from 70% to 78%.

Source: The Daily — Reasons for not voting in the federal election, October 19, 2015

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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.

You needn’t talk money anymore

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