Canadian Seniors Outnumber Children

May is Older American’s Month but seniors are making news in Canada as well.  The 2016 Census reports that Canadian seniors outnumber children for the first time since Confederation.

According to the Globe and Mail, as a result of the growing numbers of adults over the age of 65, seniors now make up 16.9 per cent of Canada’s population, exceeding those under the age of 15 at 16.6 per cent.

The new census from Statistics Canada also indicates that the number of Canadians over the age of 100 is rapidly growing and as of 2016, there are 8,230 centenarians living in Canada.  By 2031, it is projected that nearly 1 in 4 Canadians will be over the age of 65.   The trend of a growing numbers of retirees drawing on resources for pensions and health care with a shrinking workforce will have a major impact on budgets over the next 20 years.

There are now 5.9 million Canadian seniors, due in large part to increasing longevity and the surge of baby boomers entering retirement age.  The number of Canadians under age 14 has dropped to 5.8 million;  the proportion of seniors has seen it’s greatest increase since 1851.

According to the census, women still outlive men and with increasing age, there are fewer men.  Among Canadian between the ages of 85 and 99, there are only 54 men for every 100 women and among centenarians there are only 19 men for every 100 women.

With the greying of the word’s population we are currently experiencing, big changes are coming in the way we look at aging, how we save for an increasingly longer retirement and how communities support older adults aging in place.

To learn more about the 2016 Census visit Statistics Canada by following this link.