Statistics Canada Reports II

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by theman23

Completely meaningless statement.

A poster above said Boomers had just started retiring. It's a direct reply to that. Try to keep up.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

A poster above said Boomers had just started retiring. It's a direct reply to that. Try to keep up.

If you were replying to me, I was describing Canada's age distribution, not talking about when Boomers started retiring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...on_Pyramid.svg

The biggest demographics are around age 60 right now and are only slightly larger than the 30-35s (and of course more of the 65-80s will die over time than 30-45s). Canada has a fairly even distribution from 25-70 years of age. The big drop is below 25.

I think Canada's economic policies have encouraged that biggest bubble around 60 not to work for the past number of years while discouraging child births to fill in that under 10 cohort. I also believe that productivity gains are a better way to go than mass importation of low productivity workers, and are another way to make up for changes in the balance between different age cohorts. Workers are much more productive today than they were in 1900 for example and so we can support a larger number of dependents at a higher standard of living.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Canada has had pretty large-scale immigration for a long time though. Pre-2015 we still had one of the highest immigration rates in the world and above-average population growth for a developed country.

We've all known that a time would come where the Boomer bulge would retire en masse, and then start dying in large numbers (we've reached the former, but aren't at the latter yet. Natural population growth is still positive in Canada - for a few more years at least), and the Liberals actually had a fairly reasonable plan to address that: by gradually increasing the annual number of permanent residents admitted to the country from about 250,000 in 2015 to 500,000 by 2025 - enough to address the coming labour gap, without totally overwhelming the country's infrastructure & housing supply.

Instead though, we got a bit of a bait-and-switch and got a nearly four-fold increase in the number of students & TWFs, in addition to the above PR growth. I don't recall any pundits asking for this - on the contrary, it's a move that's been almost universally panned by economists and warned against by bureaucrats. The most likely scenario is that this was the result of collective incompetence and oversight, and not some stroke of political genius or necessity.

I don't disagree with any of that. Pundits did plead for a big increase in our intake numbers (the sooner the better) but the Liberals bungled it completely. It was too fast, too quickly. My issue is with people being tone deaf to the demographic crisis that's been looming for decades. As chaotic as this population surge has been/continues to be, we'd be in a heap of trouble 15-20 years from now if Federal governments had maintained the 1% population growth we'd seen through 1988-2018. It was never going to be enough.

The worry is that we'll now swing to the other extreme: an aversion to large scale immigration. If that happens, the pain we're going through (to achieve healthier demographics) will be for nought.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by someone123

If you were replying to me, I was describing Canada's age distribution, not talking about when Boomers started retiring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...on_Pyramid.svg

The biggest demographics are around age 60 right now and are only slightly larger than the 30-35s (and of course more of the 65-80s will die over time than 30-45s). Canada has a fairly even distribution from 25-70 years of age. The big drop is below 25.

The age of 60 is the youngest Boomer though. As a cohort currently aged 60-78 they are almost all retired, and many are dead.

You said this:

If you look at the population pyramid, the Boomer peak is still not quite at retirement age

Which is a weird way of saying that a very limited subset isn't at retirement age, but we are talking about a generation here.

The % of the population over 65, which we can just call retired and benefit-grabbing, has been increasing for years and will continue for a few decades at least.

[ssiguy]

Demographers and statisticians state that the end of what is described as the Boomer generation ended in 1964. I ought to know because I was born in Nov/64 so I made the cutoff by just 6 weeks. Boomers are very much already in retirement mode and this year is a landmark one as it marks the point where all Boomers will have reached the age of 60.

Saying that the biggest age cohort is no longer Boomers means nothing. it's not the bulk number that are important but rather the percentage of the population........both retirees and working age. We have a much lower percentage of working class that are going to have to support aging Boomers.

China is already seeing this in spades. The population is shrinking but what is worse is that the number of working age people is declining much faster. By the end of the decade, China will have between 80 and 100 million fewer workers than it had in 2020 all while the retiree population soars.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Demographers and statisticians state that the end of what is described as the Boomer generation ended in 1964. I ought to know because I was born in Nov/64 so I made the cutoff by just 6 weeks. Boomers are very much already in retirement mode and this year is a landmark one as it marks the point where all Boomers will have reached the age of 60.

Saying that the biggest age cohort is no longer Boomers means nothing. it's not the bulk number that are important but rather the percentage of the population........both retirees and working age. We have a much lower percentage of working class that are going to have to support aging Boomers.

China is already seeing this in spades. The population is shrinking but what is worse is that the number of working age people is declining much faster. By the end of the decade, China will have between 80 and 100 million fewer workers than it had in 2020 all while the retiree population soars.

You've identified part of the problem. The gov't shouldn't be aiding people to retire at 60 when the life expectancy is now up to 82.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Which is a weird way of saying that a very limited subset isn't at retirement age, but we are talking about a generation here.

In the distribution, you can see that those other years are smaller, with 78 being a lot smaller.

The % of the population over 65, which we can just call retired and benefit-grabbing, has been increasing for years and will continue for a few decades at least.

But it's the ratio of working age to dependents that matters, and the number of children has been shrinking as well. The % over 65 doesn't tell you much on its own.

We have also seen life expectancy rise and the average number of entitlement years has expanded dramatically. That's another choice. Was OAS always age 65 and up? It was brought in in 1953 and apparently the life expectancy then was 69. It was originally implemented to help avoid destitution in populations too infirm to work, not to provide income padding for wealthy people for the last 2-3 decades of their life. The current system where you can get $2M tax free from your primary residence and then get free money from the government for decades is what's causing the financial problems, not the sensible and humane goal of keeping seniors unable to work out of destitution.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by someone123

In the distribution, you can see that those other years are smaller, with 78 being a lot smaller.

Yes but lots are already through the system and dead. I'm not sure what your point is, but mine is that the majority of Boomers are already in retirement.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Yes but lots are already through the system and dead. I'm not sure what your point is, but mine is that the majority of Boomers are already in retirement.

I believe the federal government stops OAS payments to dead people, but maybe this will be fixed in the 2030 Liberal platform. We could have a policy where if you die with over $10M in real estate wealth the feds build and maintain a gold-plated pyramid for you indefinitely on a low density zoned plot in the bungalow belt. If this is hard to pay for we can crank up immigration to 2 million a year.

[Nashe]

Interesting tool.

CBC: See how inflation in Canada has affected the wages of workers in your region

Scroll down in article.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

If you were replying to me, I was describing Canada's age distribution, not talking about when Boomers started retiring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...on_Pyramid.svg

The biggest demographics are around age 60 right now and are only slightly larger than the 30-35s (and of course more of the 65-80s will die over time than 30-45s). Canada has a fairly even distribution from 25-70 years of age. The big drop is below 25.

I think the concern isn't just a false belief that the older generation is a lot bigger than the younger. It's that it should be a lot smaller rather than slightly larger. If each generation started out with fairly equal numbers rather than there being a baby boom, the older generation would gradually shrink over the years with a small number of people dying each year of everything from illness to accidents, suicides and crime, before reaching retirement age. But the average life expectancy has been constantly growing, and since the boomer generation was so big to begin with, that even with decades worth of deaths accounted for it still manages to be slightly larger rather than a lot smaller.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I think the concern isn't just a false belief that the older generation is a lot bigger than the younger. It's that it should be a lot smaller rather than slightly larger. If each generation started out with fairly equal numbers rather than there being a baby boom, the older generation would gradually shrink over the years with a small number of people dying each year of everything from illness to accidents, suicides and crime, before reaching retirement age. But the average life expectancy has been constantly growing, and since the boomer generation was so big to begin with, that even with decades worth of deaths accounted for it still manages to be slightly larger rather than a lot smaller.

That's very clearly shown on this Statistics Canada age pyramid. In 2003 there were 4 million people aged 65 and over, and they were just 13% of the population. In 2023 there were 7.5 million, and they represent 19% of the population.



You can see how the cohort of 20-39 year old grew thanks to net immigration. In 2003 there were 7.9 million aged 0-19, and 20 years later there were 11.3 million aged 20-39, so there was a net gain of 3.4 million in that 20 year age cohort of the population.

You can see them arriving in Canada;
7.9m 0-19 in 2003,
8.3m 5-24 in 2008,
8.9m 10-29 in 2013
9.7m 15-34 in 2018
11.3m 20-39 in 2023

The proportion of the population of working age is pretty consistent. If the 20-64 age cohorts are a fair depiction of working age, then it explains why immigration of working age people has been an important policy. [Statistics Canada population estimates by age]

Going back 40 years
1983 60%
1988 61%
1993 61%
1998 61%
2003 62%
2008 63%
2013 62%
2018 61%
2023 60%

That's presumably with the immigrants included.

The proportion of the population aged 0-19 has fallen from 25% of the population in 2003 to 21% in 2023, although the number of 0-19s increased from 7.7m in 1983, 7.9m in 2003 and 8.4m in 2023.

[Build.It]

Hot damn thats a lot of 30-somethings that were brought in.

[rdaner]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

The American Big Three metros all lost population:
Los Angeles: -71037
NYC: -65549
Chicago: -16602

The Canadian Big Three all grew by over 100K apiece:
Toronto: 221588
Montreal: 126264
Vancouver: 119650

Shout out to Calgary and Edmonton for proportionately even greater growth figures.

It is also interesting to combine this rapid growth with the high proportion of condo/apartment developments in Canadian cities versus much lower proportions in the US. And in Toronto the parking per unit is falling.

[BlackDog204]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

China is already seeing this in spades. The population is shrinking but what is worse is that the number of working age people is declining much faster. By the end of the decade, China will have between 80 and 100 million fewer workers than it had in 2020 all while the retiree population soars.

That is nothing compared to Japan, or many European countries who are experiencing negative growth. Japan is losing hundreds of thousands of people, since their birth rate is so low. China's birth rate is low too, and this will be a problem going forward.

Countries like China and japan, that do not absorb the amount of immigrants as countries like Canada and Germany, will be the first ones to feel the effects of the need to care for the Baby Boom generation.

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

That is nothing compared to Japan, or many European countries who are experiencing negative growth. Japan is losing hundreds of thousands of people, since their birth rate is so low. China's birth rate is low too, and this will be a problem going forward.

There is a big difference between Japan's situation and China's..........Japan got rich before it got old while China is still very much a developing country and with a vastly larger gap between the rich and the poor than China.