In the last 50 years, Canada's population has more than doubled and its economic output has increased nearly seven times. ¹To support this growth, Canadians have relied on the environment to meet an increased demand for energy and materials and to absorb a growing amount of waste. In general, the larger the population, the larger the economy and the consequent demand for resources.

The socio-economic data presented here provide information on some of the human activities that influence the trends in the environmental sustainability indicators. The data are divided into three broad categories: land, population and the economy. Especially within the second and third categories, several different kinds of data are included to reflect the different indicators and the variety of ways that they can be influenced.

Where possible, long time series are presented for the socio-economic variables. In some cases, the available data do not match the timeframes used for the indicators.

Variables are presented for three different spatial levels: the nation, the provinces and territories, and drainage areas. The level of spatial aggregation offered depends on the characteristics of the source data. Wherever source data come from surveys with sufficiently large sample sizes, the socio-economic variables are presented at the level of drainage areas. Drainage areas are natural geographic units defined by the boundaries between river systems. As such, they are particularly useful for analyzing human activities that affect water.  For details on the drainage area framework, please see  Data quality, concepts and methodology — Major drainage area and sub-drainage area geography  .