The Economics and Statistics Division maintains archives of previous publications for accountability purposes, but makes no updates to keep these documents current with the latest data revisions from Statistics Canada. As a result, information in older documents may not be accurate. Please exercise caution when referring to older documents. For the latest information and historical data, please contact the individual listed to the right.
<--- Return to Archive
For additional information relating to this article, please contact:
January 13, 2025STUDY: A PORTRAIT OF MILITARY FAMILIES IN CANADA FROM THE 2021 CENSUS Today Statistics Canada has released a study on the sociodemographic characteristics of the families of current and previously serving members of Canada’s armed forces. The unit of analysis for this study is the census family, and as a result only couple families, with or without children, and one-parent families are included in the analysis.
In 2021 there were 345,180 military families in Canada, representing 3.4% of Canadian families. Of this group 84.5% are veteran families, having at least one head of household with prior military experience, while active service families made up the remaining 15.5%.
Military one-parent families were more likely to be headed by men than non-military single parent families. In non-military families 77.9% of single parent families were headed by women, whereas single parent military families were headed by men at a rate of 54.4% in the active service, and 64.2% in veteran families. This may be related to the greater share of men in the military population, at 81.3% for active service, and 84.1% for veterans.
In 2021, 30.0% of military families had children aged five years and younger, nearly double the rate of non-military families (15.9%). This difference is attributable to the different age structure of the military and non-military populations. The average age of the currently serving members was 35.7 years, compared to 48.4 years for the non-military population.
Stepfamilies with children were more common in military couple families (15.6%) than in non-military couple families (11.5%). Veteran families had an even higher proportion of stepfamilies at 17.8%.
Among active military couples, 1.6% were same-gender couples, which was higher than the share among non-military couples (1.2%) and veteran couples (1.2%). This rate was even higher among dual-serving couples- those where both heads of the household served in the military- at 1.9%. Among same-gender active military couples, 53.4% were women, despite women making up only 18.7% of currently serving armed forces members.
Military families are much more mobile than other populations, with 48.0% of active military families living in a different location in 2021 than they were five years prior, while the same rate is 17.1% for non-military families and 18.1% for veterans. While some of this can be attributed to the lower average age of military families, rates remained higher when limiting the analysis to 17 to 60 year olds in the non-military population. This is partly attributable to the operational requirements of active service.
Defence infrastructure plays a large role in the geographic concentration of military families. While Ottawa-Gatineau CMA, home of the National Defence Headquarters, accounts for 3.8% of national non-military families, 11.1% of active military families reside there. The next highest proportions of military families reside in the CMAs of Halifax (8.2%), Québec (7.6%) and Edmonton (5.7%), each of which host a military base.
Military families were more likely to live in a house, on average, than non-military families. Active service families lived in a house 84.8% of the time, with veterans being in a house 82.5% of the time. In the non-military population 77.6% of couple families lived in a house. Additionally, a lower proportion of active military families were in core housing need at 0.9%, compared to non-military families at 4.1%. This trend held across all family types and the genders of the heads of households.
Military spouses(non-military persons married to a person serving in the Canadian armed forces) were more likely to have higher levels of education than non-military spouses. 78.4% of military spouses held a postsecondary degree compared to 65.2% of non-military spouses.
Source: A portrait of military families in Canada from the 2021 Census
<--- Return to Archive