Latest / Eh Sayers / The Grey Anatomy of Canada: The Story Behind Canada’s Aging Population
Transcript
- Max: Welcome to Eh Sayers, a podcast by Statistics Canada, where we meet the people behind the data and explore the stories behind the numbers. I'm your host, Max Zimmerman. The year is 1946. After six painful and devastating years of war, economic optimism is soaring. Soldiers are returning home to settle down, and the baby boom is now underway. In 1946 alone, Canada saw a whopping 15% increase in births in just one year. The baby boom lasted 20 years in Canada, and during that time, more than 8.2 million babies were born. Demographers use a chart called the population pyramid that shows the total population broken down by age group. It allows us to see what percentage of the population each respective age group makes up. During the baby boom, Canada's pyramid looked like how you'd expect. It had a wide base representing the vast number of children and youth and continued slimming as you worked your way upwards through the different age groups. It looked like a true pyramid. Today, a lot has changed. Our population pyramid has lost its wide base. It has a large bump in the middle of the chart representing the millennial generation and an even larger bump above that representing our baby boomers today. Our current pyramid doesn't actually look like a pyramid at all. It looks more like waves with a tide coming in and out. Is this new pyramid with bumps and valleys concerning for demographers? What does it mean that we as Canadians are getting older and how did we even get to this point? I'm no demographer, but luckily for me, a bunch of them work down the hall, so let me go grab one of them to explain what this all means. Patrick: My name is Patrick Charbonneau. I'm Section Chief in the Demographic Estimate Program of the Centre for Demography at Statistics Canada. Max: Patrick, just before we started talking, I was on the StatCan website, and I was using the interactive population pyramid tool that they have there. And it's interesting, I was noticing that the population pyramid now seems a bit top heavy. So, people above the age of 60 seem to be making up a pretty decent chunk of the Canadian population. I was just wondering if you could give us the brief 101 in terms of, like, what has our population pyramid looked like in past decades or years, and how did we get to where we are now? How fast did things change in Canada? Patrick: Yeah, well, what you observe with the population pyramid, having, I would say, some kind of bulge in the upper part of it, is the baby boomer generation. They were very numerous when they were born from the 1940s to the 1960s, and they are now in their 60s to 80s, and they, they were one of the largest generations of Canada, so their impact is still seen in the age pyramid. It's a phenomenon that occurred all over the world, so Canada is not unique, but Canada is one of the countries where the baby boom was, had the largest effect, in fact, among all countries of the world. Max: So, then what does an ideal population pyramid look like? Is it something that changes from country to country, or is that something that there's sort of a universal rubric in terms of what a healthy population pyramid looks like for any country? Patrick: I wouldn't say there is any ideal pyramid. Societies need to evolve in fact with the reshaping of the age structure of their country. Although there is no ideal pyramid, there are some, I would say, sequences in the demographic history of a country. So, when a country has high fertility and high mortality, as was the case not long ago, one or two centuries ago, some one or two centuries ago, this was the norm for all countries to have high fertility and high mortality. We would see a perfectly shaped triangular pyramid. But over time, what we call the demographic transition, which means that we transition from high fertility to lower fertility and from high mortality to lower mortality, the shape of the pyramid changes, and we see more seniors, less children, and that's where the pyramid starts to look more like a sarcophagus, like if we want to keep the idea, the Egyptian idea. Max: You mentioned the low fertility rate and mortality rate as well. And my first thought when I think about population aging is that we're simply having fewer children than we used to be having. I'm in my 30s and in decades or generations past, it was definitely common for people of my age to have a family or at least a kid, but I don't think that's currently the norm today. So, on the flip side, though, something that I hadn't considered is that we're also just living much longer than we used to. I'm wondering to what extent is the population aging due to lower fertility rates, to people not having as many kids versus people living into their, you know, 80s, 90s, sometimes even a hundred years old today? Patrick: It's definitely both, yeah. When we talk about low fertility, it's a trend that impacts population aging. If we see less children in the population, a lower proportion of children in the population, it will impact population aging. And at the same time, increasing life expectancy, the fact that people are living longer, is also having an impact on population aging, on having a higher proportion of people aged 65 and older. Adding to that, I would say that the uniqueness of the baby boom cohorts also is an element of why Canada's is in a special time of its history in terms of population aging, because the baby boom was such an event with large cohorts, and those cohorts are now all among the 65 and older population. So, it also adds a layer to population aging, the baby boom cohort’s element here. Max: Yeah, for sure. And I know that they talk about the replacement rate, demographers, and that's 2.1, I believe, in Canada. Is that 2.1 per person? Patrick: It's the average number of children per woman, so this is the number that would be needed in a closed population without immigration for a population to continue to grow. In Canada, our population, of course, is still continuing to grow, even though the total fertility rate is well below 2.1, because we have a lot of immigration. We had immigration in the past, and we continue to have strong immigration, and it helps Canada’s population continue to grow. Max: The 0.1 seems a bit weird to me when we're talking about human beings, to have 0.1. Is that due to things like infant mortality? Um, what are the reasons that they say 0.1 as opposed to just too flat? Patrick: Yeah, it's really a technical kind of number to take into account the fact that some people, unfortunately, will die before being able to give birth. It also considers the sex ratio that is not exactly fifty-fifty. In fact, there are always a little bit more baby boys being born than baby girls, so that's why we have the 0.1. Max: Understood. And as our population ages, I can't help but think about how life is changing for families in the country. The people who come to the front of my mind are those of the sandwich generation. I was wondering, can you explain who they are and why they're being hit pretty hard as the population continues to increase in age? Patrick: When we talk about the sandwich generation, we generally refer to people who have to take care of both of their children and their aging parents. For example, the sandwich generation could, in fact, refer to anyone having children and aging parents, but it can also refer to people that need to take care of relatives. And with population aging, the chances that you are part of that sandwich generation is increasing because we see that there's a lot more people living longer with increased life expectancy. Also, the fact that fertility is lower than before can also somehow increase the chances of being part of the sandwich generation, because there are less children to take care of their parents. Often, there's only going to be one or two children, if you have an aging parent that require care, there's not going to be a lot of children around to help. There's only going to be only one or two. So, it does, in fact, increase the odds of being part of the sandwich generation. Also, what we are observing is the rapid growth of the 85 plus population. So generally, those are the people that require more care, and this is definitely a variable to consider with the increase of this sandwich generation. Max: Yeah, I saw this cool post on my Instagram the other day. It was these guys in New York that set up an old phone booth just on the sidewalk, and it had a big sign that said, “Call a boomer.” And when you go to use the phone, you pick it up, you don’t have to dial anything, it just connects you directly to a senior citizen on the other end who’s living in a senior living facility. And I just thought it was a nice, cool concept, a cute little way of maintaining that connection between the younger and older generations, because as Canadians continue to age and we do become an older population, I would imagine that there is disconnect between the younger people and the older people. So, I’m just wondering, I know it might not be your area of expertise, but what do you think in terms of how important it is for the younger generations to stay connected to our older generations as they continue to age? Patrick: Definitely. I think it's important for a generation to communicate with one another. One thing that I'd like to say also that's important is that even the older generation can be part of that sandwich generation. You do have some people aged 65 and older that do care still for their children or their grandchildren and still have also parents living. So, it's quite common, let's say, for people aged 60 to 70, to still have elderly parents that they need to take care of. So, we're talking also about elderly people caring for their elderly parents, and at the same time, they may be helping their children with babysitting their grandchildren. So, we need also to talk about that, that elderly are not the burden for society. They contribute a lot of time to their own families. They also do a lot of volunteering, so that's another aspect to keep in mind. Max: I understand there’s also a geographical component to our aging population as well. I know in areas like Atlantic Canada, they’re experiencing a lot of youth outmigration. Could you talk a bit about that? Like, what does that mean for our more rural communities or just smaller centers? If we have a lot of youth going to big urban centers, I imagine that’s where they’re going. I can imagine that would create some, some problems for other areas. So, could you fill us in on that? Patrick: Yeah, well, you set the table correctly. Population aging does not occur with the same intensity across Canada. In fact, the Atlantic provinces and the province of Quebec are generally older, while the Prairies and the territories are younger. During many years, Atlantic provinces lost population in their migration exchanges, and the population that is more at risk of moving are younger adults. So, this is one of the reasons why population aging occurs faster in Atlantic provinces. To give you a concrete example, in 2025, with data that I am working on in the Demographic Estimate Program, we saw that for the first time, the proportion of people aged 65 or older reached more than 25% in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. So that's more than one person in four that is now aged 65 or older. It's a first for a province in Canada. Max: I'm just wondering if there's any initiatives that you know of that deal with these issues. Like, are there incentives for people to stay in these provinces? Are governments trying to do stuff like that, or is it sort of too early and we're still working on it? Or it doesn't matter, and it's just a natural ebb and flow? Patrick: Yeah, well, good question. Of course, a lot of provinces are trying to keep their population, and there are a lot of places that do have some programs to try to mitigate the effect of internal migration, but at the same time, I know other provinces are also trying to attract people. But when it comes to population aging, we have to keep in mind, and this applies to both internal and international migration Population aging is impacted by migration, but at a certain point, migration will likely have more of an impact on the size of the population, and less on the age structure of a given area. It does have an impact very briefly or when the extent of the migration is quite large, but it rarely has a durable long-term impact over time. Max: And I know that you and your team have been working a lot on population estimates lately. What's the process like for estimating the population and why is that so important? Patrick: When we do population estimates, we always start with the census population. In fact, we start with the adjusted census population, and we integrate various administrative data files, immigration files, vital stats data, and tax files. So, we're able to add and subtract population from our base population from the census. We add births, we remove deaths, we add immigrants, we also take into consideration interprovincial migration, and we obtain a new population at more recent points in time. Those population estimates are also used for various planning uses by government or people in the private sector that want to know more about the current population of Canada. So, it's very important that we have accurate numbers because there are monetary implications behind those estimates. But on top of that, why do we produce population estimates? Because we want to know how many we are in the country, not just every five years when there's a census. Max: Are there any other cohorts, segments of the population that we're seeing interesting trends in right now in terms of their estimates? Patrick: Yes. What we've seen lately is the rise of millennials, even though all millennials have been born since quite a while with recent immigration since the pandemic until recently, we know that a lot of immigrants arrive in the country in their 20s, in their 30s as early adults. It really helped grow that generation of the millennials. And in fact, recently, two or three years ago, I think it was in 2023 or 2024, millennials outnumbered, for the first time, the baby boom generation. The millennials are now officially the largest generation. The millennials are now officially the largest generation in Canada, and they will likely remain the largest generation for quite a while as well. Max: Okay, cool. And then is there anything that we haven't talked about that I haven't asked you that you would like Canadians to know? Patrick: I wanted to talk about the positive social impacts, not just negative ones, the fact that older adults do also contribute significantly through volunteering. They support their families. They play an important role in intergenerational solidarity. So aging is not just only about rising dependency. It's also a transformation of social and family support systems. Often this aspect is overlooked, so I want to make sure to underline the fact that population aging does have challenges, does create challenges, of course, but it also has positive social effects, such as grandparents caring for their grandchildren, baby boomers being very active in volunteering activities. So that's something I'd like to underline here. Max: It's a really good point. And if people would like to learn more about aging population, population estimates, and the demographics of Canada, or more broadly, where could they go? Patrick: Yeah, well, definitely I invite them to consult the Statistics Canada website, and in particular, we have the demography and population portal, and also, as we're talking about population aging, there is also an older adults portal. So those two statistical portals would be very useful for people who are interested in demography and population aging in general. Max: Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Patrick. Thanks for your time and your expertise today. Patrick: Thank you, Max. Max: You've been listening to Eh Sayers. Thank you to our guest, Patrick Charbonneau. If you'd like to learn more about Canada's population or use the Interactive Population Pyramid tool mentioned in this episode, you could find all that and more on the StatCan website. You can find the show wherever you get your podcasts. There, you can also find a French version of our show, Hé-coutez bien! If you like this show, please rate, review, and subscribe. And as always, thanks for listening.