Mapping Old Age Security

by Patrick Cain

I produced a series of maps recently showing rates of OAS recipients by three-character postal code across the country. (Rebecca Lindell of Global’s Ottawa bureau, obtained the data.)

Mapping OAS recipients is roughly the same exercise as mapping Canadians over 65 - all but the wealthiest are eligible. Mapping where older people are necessarily shows where younger people aren’t, which makes the map as much about labour migration as anything else.

It’s nice to be able to work with this kind of data so far in advance of the next census release, which will be largely about aging.

Here’s the OAS map of Nova Scotia, where older people are concentrated in roughly the whole province except greater Halifax:
Newfoundland has the same pattern:
(The country’s youngest postal codes are around Fort McMurray, mostly.)

The map itself is a single Fusion Tables map with 15 different regional views, which is a template we’ve used for several other projects, like the census.

Cross-posted at patrickcain.ca.