BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE MISREPRESENTATION OF FAMILY STATISTICS
(How to Lie With Statistics)

When the results of the 2006 census were released in September 2007, the media gloated that the traditional family was in steep decline and that alternate family forms were here to stay. Their interpretation of the census material, however, was selective and reflected their own left wing ideology, rather than the facts.

Married Couples a Majority

While headlines shouted “Married people now in the minority” (Ottawa Citizen), attention was diverted away from census results which showed that “married-couple families accounted for 68.6% of all census families.” Common law couples represented 15.5%; lone parent families 15.9%; and same-sex couples 0.6% of all couples. (The Daily, Statistics Canada, September 12, 2007).

Headlines blared sensationally “married people are a minority”. However, the distorted figures were obtained by including “1,310,790 children aged 15 to 17 [as unmarried], though children cannot legally marry under 18 in most provinces except with written permission of parents”. (The Hill Times, Sept 24, 2007, Statistics Canada Counted Over One Million Children as ‘Unmarried’ in Report). Statistics Canada also counted 1.4 million widows and widowers as single. In fact, a majority, i.e. 51% of adult Canadians are married, 12% separated or divorced, 6% widowed, and 31% never married.

True, the trend is a decrease in marriages and an increase in common law and lone parents but the majority of adult Canadians are married and want stable long-term marriages. As Reginald Bibby, sociologist at the University of Lethbridge stated “What Canadians want is a traditional marriage but they aren’t getting it.” (Ottawa Citizen, Dec 6, 2004). According to his research, 90% of teenagers intend to marry, have children and stay with the same partner for life. REAL Women believes that public policy should help them achieve this noble goal.

Mixed Message on Divorce Statistics – Which Divorce Rate?

It is often stated that the divorce rate in Canada is about 40% and that it is 50% in the United States. This particular divorce rate is calculated by dividing the number of divorces by the number of marriages in any one year and multiplying by 100. This is often interpreted as indicating that almost half of North Americans are divorced. Pollster Lou Harris has written, “The idea that half of American marriages are doomed is one of the most specious pieces of statistical nonsense ever perpetuated in modern times…. Only one out of eight marriages will end in divorce. In any one year, only about 2 percent of existing marriages will break up.” In Canada, the 2006 census found that 8.1% of Canadians were divorced at the time Canadians were asked the census questions.

The crude divorce rate is calculated by counting the number of divorces in any one year for every 100,000 people in the population (this includes children). For 2003 in Canada it was 223.7 per 100,000, or 0.2237%. A chart of divorce rates from 1921 to 2003 can be found in the Nov/Dec 2006 issue of REALity.

Another divorce rate is calculated by counting the number of marriages that dissolved by the 30th wedding anniversary. For Canada, it was 14% in 1969; 30% in 1975; and 38% in 2003. It is also referred to as the Total Divorce Rate by the 30th wedding anniversary.

In Canada today, there are approximately 70,000 divorces a year, approximately 150,000 weddings a year and approximately 6,000,000 stable married couples.

Domestic Violence

The area of “domestic violence” is equally fraught with misrepresentation. Feminists demand more and more government funding to publicize “violence against women” yet rarely is the public exposed to the Statistics Canada finding that there is a fourfold difference in rates of violence against women living in common-law relationships compared with women in registered marriages (9% and 2% respectively. A Statistical Profile 1998, Statistics Canada).

This report also states that the strongest predictors of wife assault are:

the young age of couples (18 – 24 years)
living in a common-law relationship
chronic unemployment on the part of the male partner
low income
low education.

These fundamental causes are never addressed by well-funded bureaucracies perpetually lamenting “domestic violence”.

Men also Victimized by Violence

While much publicity is given to violence against women, forgotten is the finding by Statistics Canada that “An estimated 7% of women and 6% of men in a current or previous spousal relationship encountered spousal violence during the five years up to and including 2004….” (The Daily, Statistics Canada, July 14, 2005)

Quebec Values Differ

The media also fails to report the fact that statistics for the family in all of Canada are greatly distorted by statistics from Quebec, whose values differ quite markedly from those of the rest of Canada. For example, the media did not, for the most part, point out that that the total increase in common law marriages in Canada was due to Quebec, where common law marriages increased by 20.3% between 2001 - 2006, thereby distorting the national figures. Common law couple families in Quebec accounted for 44.4% of the national total. In fact, Quebec has the largest number of divorces, suicides, common law relationships, and abortions, as well as the lowest birth rate in all of Canada. Obviously, Quebecers are free to choose their own values and lifestyle. A problem arises, however, when their profoundly different values skew our national statistics, falsely indicating that Canadians are much more liberal than they actually are.

Conclusion

A familiar saying among researchers is “Statistics don’t lie but statisticians do.” It is unfortunate that tax funded research and media reporting indulge in highlighting negative social indicators, rather than presenting an unbiased, comprehensive picture of social factors affecting Canadians.

BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS