Naive household size

This map shows the "naive household size" in each region, taking the total population divided by the number of private households. This differs from the average household size in that it uses total population instead of the population in private households, as can be seen when comparing to the household size map. For most regions this won't make any or any noticeable difference, but this will heavily affect regions with collective dwellings. Take the dissemination block on UBC campus covering the area between Agronomy Road and Thunderbird Boulevard and West and Main Mall. It registers as one household with 635 people. One might be inclined to think this is a commune with 635 people, but a more reasonable interpretation of the data is that while the area contains one private dwelling unit with one household, there are only a few people living there. The vast majority of the 635 people are students in dorms, which are classified as collective dwellings. Many of the students in these dorms will return to their parent's home during university breaks and thus have their usual residence with their parents and register as temporarily present persons. But a good number will stay at the dorm during the break and have the dorm as their usual residence and will show up in the total population counts for this region. A little more extreme example is the large dissemination block between University and Thunderbird Boulevards and Wesbrook and Health Sciences Mall which is greyed out in this area because it contains no households, but registers with a population of 324 people. This will cover dorms that are classified as collective dwellings, with some of the students having this as their usual residence. Compare this to the corresponding map for 2016 that uses the population in private households.

Author: CensusMapper Team

Dataset: CA21