Recently I posted on how we’re still not seeing any big age-specific losses in net migration figures in Metro Vancouver following the release of 2016 Census data. To summarize, there is STILL no flight of the millennials, BUT maybe there’s a slow leak of the Baby Boomers, which might be seen as evidence of “cashing out” of the local real estate market.

Today I wanted to provide both some metropolitan comparisons to note how Vancouver’s patterns fit with a couple of similar places, and also some municipal comparisons within the Metro Vancouver area. I also wanted to make some technical adjustments in how I modeled mortality* as I aged people through the past five years to estimate net migration, which really matters for older adults (not so much for the young). Again, I’m using 2011 and 2016 age distributions drawn from census profiles to get at age-specific net migration estimates for each of the metro areas and municipalities below.

First let’s compare Vancouver as a metropolitan area to two other metro areas: Edmonton and Toronto. I like this comparison primarily because Vancouver is nestled nicely between these two areas in terms of size, and they’re all big university towns.

For Vancouver, you may notice that the figure looks very similar to what I posted two days ago, up until you get to folks in the 70s and above. That’s where mortality effects really start to matter! I think the above is a better approximation of those effects, but it’s tricky to get them right.

Comparing Vancouver to Toronto and Edmonton, what stands out most for me is just how similar these three metropolitan areas look! Metro Edmonton has grown faster over the last five years in % growth terms, but age-wise, the basic pattern of growth is the same as in Metro Vancouver or Metro Toronto. Young people (including Millennials) pour into all three of these areas, and then mostly stick around.

I noted in Vancouver there was new evidence (at least new to me) of a slow leak of Baby Boomers over the last five years. It appears this leak is also showing up in Metro Toronto, with a very similar pattern. It appears there are fewer folks in their late fifties and sixties than might be expected, suggesting they’re leaving town (cashing out?). Then people in their seventies and above start returning (probably for the good health care & related facilities).

There is also a later-life leak of Metro Edmontonians, but it starts later and never quite stops until the latest age. This could reflect more of a straightforward retirement and return home effect for the many folks drawn to the region, but it’s hard to say. At any rate, all later life migration patterns are dwarfed by the influx of younger adults (and their children) into these growing regions. I don’t see a lot of cause for concern about any particular age-groups shying away from our rapidly growing metro areas.

What about within Vancouver’s metro area? I’m somewhat ambivalent about emphasizing municipal differences in age-specific net migration patterns insofar as metropolitan areas tend to be tightly integrated. When a group disproportionately moves over the border from one municipality to another, it doesn’t have a big impact on the vitality of the region as a whole. Nevertheless, it’s worth tracking, and it certainly can have big implications for quite local livability, diversity, development, and transportation questions.

Here I’m just going to compare Vancouver and Surrey, the Lower Mainland’s biggest two municipalities, with Maple Ridge, a smaller suburb further out.

Here you really get a sense of how tightly connected central cities and their suburbs can be. As the region’s central city (and biggest university town), Vancouver receives an ENORMOUS influx of young people. Then, as they move into their thirties (and often start having children of their own), they tend to move out again, slowly leaking out of the City thereafter. Nevertheless, so many young adults move to the City of Vancouver that they overwhelm the later leavers. In net terms, the majority of young adult arrivals stick around in the City of Vancouver all through their later lives.

But back to the leavers – where do they go when they leave? Mostly to the suburbs. Maple Ridge is the City of Vancouver’s mirror image in this regard. People in their thirties and beyond account for most of this suburban municipality’s growth. By contrast, young adults, especially of university age, but extending into the twenties, flee Maple Ridge. Where are they going? (see above).

What about Surrey? It’s still a suburb, but also increasingly a centre of action in its own right within a multi-polar metropolis. At the moment it’s hit a sort of demographic sweet spot where it’s gaining people at all ages. Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that while young adults aren’t exactly fleeing Surrey, their contribution to its growth isn’t as strong as for older adults or their children, and it remains nowhere near as strong as what we see in the City of Vancouver.

On the whole, these net migration patterns are not too surprising for a relatively large metropolitan area. Young people tend to leave home and move toward the vibrant city centre. Later they tend to move back to the suburbs as they settle down and start families of their own. If anything, what’s striking here is just how many young people remain in the City of Vancouver as they age, living on their own or in diverse families across a wide array of the different housing options the City is working to provide – if still, typically, at too great an expense!

 

 

*- my mortality modeling from my earlier post was really crude – simply applying five years of the expected death rate to the starting (2011) population. Bad demographer, bad! Now I’m using BC Deaths data to apply a survival rate and age the population from 2011 year by year, for each of the past five years, allowing one-fifth of the population in any given age group to age to move to the next mortality risk with each year and then applying the survival rates to the surviving population in sequence. This still doesn’t account for the mortality of recent migrants (in other words, recent arrivals could die and never be counted by the census, and I don’t take into account their mortality in any separate fashion – if I did it would boost the net migration estimates, especially for older adults). I’m also twiddling a bit with my estimates for 0-4 year olds and 85+ year olds, as needed by modeling (infant mortality is much higher than any year afterward until quite late in life, and after 85 I’m dividing the population into about half experiencing 85-89 vs. 90+ mortality). But I think I’ve got most of the technical details now closer to realistic for estimation purposes. As noted previously, none of this really matters much for younger population groups.