Highlights from census 2016 numbers on families, households, languages

OTTAWA — Highlights from Wednesday’s latest batch of data from the 2016 census, this one focused on families, households, marital status and language:

— The Canadian household averaged just 2.4 people in 2016, compared with 5.6 people in 1871.

— More than one in three Canadians aged 20-34 — 34.7 per cent — were living with at least one parent in 2016, compared with 30.6 per cent in 2001. During that same period, the percentage of people in that age group living with a family of their own fell from 49.1 per cent to 41.9 per cent.

— The living-at-home phenomenon is most pronounced in Ontario, with 42.1 per cent of young adults living with a parent, a 20.3 per cent increase over 2001. In Toronto and Oshawa, Ont., the ratio was more than 47 per cent.

— Just over 28 per cent of all households comprised a single person in 2016 — the highest share of one-person households since 1867, making it the most common living arrangement in Canada for the first time ever. 53.7 per cent of them were women.

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— Three in 10 children in Canada were living in non-traditional family arrangements, such as in a lone-parent family, a stepfamily, with grandparents or other relatives, or as foster children. Statistics Canada counted 28,030 foster children aged 14 and under in Canada in 2016.

— Couples with children made up 26.5 per cent of all households, down from 31.5 per cent in 2001.

— More than 1 million children, or 19.2 per cent, were living in a single-parent family in 2016, up from 17.8 per cent in 2001. Of those, 81.3 per cent lived with their mother. During that same period, however, the number living with their father grew 34.5 per cent.

— There were 72,880 same-sex couples in Canada in 2016, a 60.7 per cent increase over 2006. One-third of them were married, and about 12 per cent — most of them women — were living with children.

— One-third (33 per cent) of women aged 65 and older were living alone in 2016, down from 38.3 per cent in 2001, compared with 17.5 per cent of men. 51.4 per cent of senior women reported being part of a married or common-law couple, up from 44.4 per cent in 2001.

— While married couples still dominate, 21.3 per cent of all couples were living common-law in 2016, compared with 6.3 per cent in 1981.

— Multigenerational households — at least three generations of the same family — was the fastest-growing household type in 2016, growing by 37.5 per cent compared with 21.7 per cent for all households. Some 2.2 million Canadians lived in a multigenerational household in 2016.

— Nearly 7.6 million Canadians reported speaking a language other than English or French at home in 2016, an increase of 14.5 per cent since 2011.

— The rate of English-French bilingualism was 18 per cent last year, the highest ever. However, French as a mother tongue fell to 21.3 per cent in 2016, compared with 22 per cent in 2011. In Quebec, that rate was 78.4 per cent, down from 79.7 per cent five years earlier.

— Tagalog (Filipino) was the fastest-growing language in Canada, increasing by 35 per cent over 2011 figures, followed by Arabic (30 per cent), Farsi (26.7 per cent), Hindi (26.1 per cent) and Urdu (25 per cent).

— Some 228,770 people reported speaking an Indigenous language at home, while only 213,230 reporting having an Indigenous mother tongue — evidence that more people are adopting them as a second language.

— 19.4 per cent of the Canadian population reported speaking more than one language at home, up from 17.5 per cent in 2011.

The Canadian Press