Creating a demographic profile for an urban school neighbourhood using census tract data

Looking at a demographic profile of a school neighbourhood can help provide an insight into the make-up of the population near the school. Knowledge of local demographic patterns can be useful to teachers. E-STAT provides this type of information from the Census for every municipality in Canada and for neighbourhood areas called census tracts within large urban centres. By extracting data of interest for census tracts surrounding a school, we can learn about the local school area.

In this specific activity, we learn how to use an urban school postal code to extract demographic data on family types for the census tract containing the school. We can use this same process to extract and graph any of hundreds of census characteristics for any urban school census tract. For smaller municipalities, E-STAT does not provide census data for areas finer than the municipality.

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See How-To - User guide for the Search Census module for more help.

From the E-STAT sidebar, select Search Censuses.

How to find a Census table using Search Censuses

• Under Select a Census, choose 2006 Census.
• At the Database selection page, choose 2006 Census of Population (48 Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Tracts).
• At the Profile selection page, choose 2006 Cumulative Profile.

How to select your characteristic

Under Characteristics, select:

• With children at home, married couples, couple families by family structure
• With children at home, common-law couples, couple families by family structure
• Female parent, lone-parent families by sex of parent
• Male parent, lone-parent families by sex of parent

How to select a geography

• In the box under Selection by Postal Code, type in the postal code for the school. In this example we have chosen l'école Taché, 744 rue Langevin, Saint-Boniface, Manitoba, R2H 2W7.

• Click the icon Table Areas as Columns.

Analysis 1

Question 1: What are the different types of families recorded in the census? __________________________________
Answer

Census tracts are defined as stable relatively homogeneous areas within large urban centres. The Census tract number is displayed at the top of the column above the numeric data values.

Question 2: What census metropolitan area and census tract number corresponds to the postal code you entered? ________________________
Answer

Question 3: Which is the most common type of family structure for the selected area? ________________________________
Answer

Question 4: How many families from the identified area are lone parent families? _______________________________
Answer

Graphing the results

Now let's look at other ways to depict the same data in E-STAT.

Click the Pie chart icon. This produces a pie chart showing the distribution of families with children at home for married couples, common-law couples and lone parent families. Click the Bar chart icon.

Analysis 2

Question 1: What is one advantage and disadvantage of using the pie chart, bar chart and table for displaying this information? ______________________________________________
Answer

Repeat the procedure looking at family structure for another school postal code in a different part of the city where you expect to find a different make-up of family types. Compare the results observed.

Repeat the procedure using 2001 Census data. Compare the results observed.