Advantages of the One Year Mobility Variable for Breaking Down Interprovincial Migration by Age, Sex and Marital Status - ARCHIVED

The estimation of the population by age, sex and marital status for each province is a difficult task, principally because of migration. The characteristics of migrants are available only from responses to the census. Until 1991, the census included only the question on place of residence five years ago. Thus, a person who had a different residence five years earlier was considered as a migrant and was attributed the characteristics reported for him/her at the time of the census. However, the respondent had up to five years to change characteristics, particularly those relating to marital status.

Since 1991, the census has asked a question on the place of residence one year ago. The same procedure attributes to the migrant the characteristics reported one year earlier, but this time there is only one year to change them.The article describes, in some detail, the methods now used by Statistics Canada to estimate the characteristics of migrants and evaluates the advantages of using the data on place of residence one year ago.