Ethno-racial groups in Montreal and Vancouver, 1971-2001

As in the earlier study of Toronto, the idea is to expand the traditional conceptualization of ethnicity in Canada, in terms of the national origins of European settlers and their descendants, to encompass ethno-racial groups within the majority and major “visible minority” communities. [...] Age, Immigration, Language and Household Composition Tables 2.1 to 2.5 and Charts 2.1 to 2.4 give the demographic characteristics of ethno-racial groups including their age distributions, the proportion of immigrants and when they settled in Canada, individuals’ first language and the language they speak at home, and the distributions of types of families for the population and of children under 1 [...] In Montreal, members of the African and the South and Central American ethno-racial groups are the youngest, averaging 25.4 and 27.9 years respectively; while the average age of Aboriginal, Arab and West Asian, South Asian and East Asian and Caribbean ethno-racial groups range between 29.6 and 32.4 years, still substantially lower than the European mean. [...] Compared to 25.1 percent university graduates for members of European ethno-racial groups between 25 and 34 in Vancouver, the rates are 31.9 percent for the Arab and West Asian groups, 23.8 percent for the South Asian groups, 37.8 percent for the East Asian groups, 23.1 percent for the African groups, 26.6 percent for the Caribbean groups and 21.9 percent for the South and Central American groups. [...] A regression analysis in Table 4.3 shows the extent to which differences in the employment income of ethno-racial groups are the result of the age distributions of ethno-racial groups, educational differences, and the proportion of immigrants and when they came to Canada.