Abstract
The Canadian Jewish population has seen only modest growth in the past 20 years, following a more significant increase between 1981 and 1991. The latter decade coincided with the beginning of significant immigration by Jews from the Former Soviet Union. Jews reside in every region of Canada including the Northern Territories, although they are concentrated heavily in the major urban centers. The metropolitan area of Toronto is home to 188,710 Jews and includes about half (48.2%) of Canada’s Jewish population. The Montreal community numbers 90,780 Jews. The median age of Canadian Jews is slightly older than the national average but much older than ethnic groups with large numbers of more recent immigrants. The Canadian Jewish population has a slightly larger proportion of children (age 0–14) than the total population (18.2% and 17.0% respectively) and a significantly larger proportion of persons over age 65 than the overall Canadian population (16.9% and 13.9% respectively). There are 66,280 elderly Jews 65+ years of age residing in Canada. A total of 10,395 Jewish elderly live below the poverty line. About one in six seniors (15.7%) is poor. Female seniors are almost twice as likely as males to fall below the poverty line (19.3% and 11.6% respectively).
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Notes
- 1.
Statistics Canada reverted to using a census methodology with a change in national governments in 2015.
- 2.
In the case of Jewish communities, it is possible that the ultra-Orthodox were also under-represented in the final count.
- 3.
For a more comprehensive description of the erosion of the utility of and the problems associated with using both the ethnicity and religion variables in identifying Canadian Jews, see Weinfeld and Schnoor (2015).
- 4.
More specifically, the US Census asks only one ethnicity-related question identifying respondents of Hispanic or Latino descent. The American Community Survey, an annual demographic study of the US population, does ask questions on “ancestry” and language spoken at home.
- 5.
The NHS does not ask specific questions such as denominational affiliation, levels of religious observance, attitudes toward Israel, etc. For these data, the Jewish community needs to develop its own survey tools.
- 6.
References
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Shahar, C. (2019). Canadian Jewish Population, 2018. In: Dashefsky, A., Sheskin, I. (eds) American Jewish Year Book 2018. American Jewish Year Book, vol 118. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03907-3_7
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