Do you remember the book entitled "Boom, Bust & Echo" that was
popular in the late 1990s? I pulled it off my shelf last week as Statistics
Canada released new population data for all communities, including Pelham, from
the 2011 Census.
The book, by David K. Foot and Daniel Stoffman, theorized that
demographics – the study of population – explained "about two-thirds of
everything." They wrote that demographics describes "which products will be in
demand, where job opportunities will occur, what school enrolments will be,
when house values will rise or drop, what kinds of food people will buy and
what kinds of cars they will drive."
Looking at Canadian demographic data, the book groups the
population into "cohorts" and names them. For example, you have likely heard of
the most famous and largest of cohorts – the "Baby Boomers" – born from 1947 to
1966.
So I took the Statistics Canada data and compared our population
in Pelham with the rest of the Niagara Region (excluding Pelham). It reveals some interesting facts.
In terms of population distribution, the data clearly identifies
the presence of "Baby Boomers" – those 45 to 64 (in 2011) – in Pelham and in
the rest of Niagara. If you are one of
them, you made up 33% of Pelham’s population, compared to 30% in the rest of
Niagara in 2011.
The next group – the Baby Bust – born from 1967 to 1979 would have
been 32 to 44 years old in 2011. This group
made up just more than 13% in Pelham and 15% of the rest of Niagara.
Do you too find these differences between Pelham and the Region
fascinating?
The Echo group – the children of the Baby Boomers – is another
large cohort with additional differences. If you were between 16 and 31 years
old in 2011, you were one of more than 16% in Pelham and 19% in Niagara.
The next group of children – referred to as the "Millennium Kids" and aged from zero to 15 years old in 2011 – formed nearly 17% of the
population.
Those of other cohorts include the "Roaring Twenties" (aged from
82 to 91 in 2011 and roughly 4% of the population), the "Depression Babies" (from 72 to 81 in 2011 and approximately 8%), and "World War II Babies" (65 to
71 in 2011 and just over 8%).
Perhaps you, like me, wonder what this means to the future of our
Town and our Region. As your Mayor, I will
continue to consider what this demographic reality means in terms of current
and future public services and facilities.
I plan to write more
about Pelham’s demographics in a future column.
(To see what these numbers looked like from last Census, please check out one of my columns from four years ago.)
