An influx of new immigrants is shifting Canada’s gender ratio, as a higher share of male newcomers helps squeeze the female majority to its smallest margin in decades.
The population of adult men grew 3.4 per cent over the past year, while women rose 2.9 per cent, making the spread between the growth of the two groups the widest in nearly 50 years of records, according to an analysis by Doug Porter, chief economist at Bank of Montreal.
The gap is even larger in the 25-to-44 age group, in which men have seen a 4.8 per cent jump and women a 3.9 per cent increase. There are 141,000 more men than women in this age bracket as of January, compared with a long-run average difference of zero.
“What we’ve seen in the last 10 years is that the growth rate in the male population has steadily been rising faster than the female population in that age group. It seems to be something a little bit more permanent,” Porter said in an interview.
The figures highlight the country’s changing demographic trends due to its liberal immigration policy, which aims to rapidly expand the pool of workers to stave long-term economic decline from an aging populace.