Monday, October 6, 2014

Subdivision-Level Data for 1971 Census

Question

I’m currently trying to find subdivision-level data for the 1971 census. My researcher is interested in a lot of stuff, but let’s start with income by income source (wages and salaries, government transfer payments, other sources of income). A quick look at the census products table of contents: <http://data.library.utoronto.ca/datapub/codebooks/c/cc71/cen71pub.pdf> tells me I’m not going to get anything interesting at subdivision level for income for the 1971 census in the print products, though I’ve sometimes had luck finding other variables in the “SP” series. What I’ll usually do in these kind of cases is look around the Enumeration area: BSTs <http://datalib.chass.utoronto.ca/cc71/cc71bsts.htm> as shared by UofT. They don’t always correspond exactly to what’s available in the DLI collection but can be really useful when hunting around for stuff in the FTP. For example, the “Family Files” have the income by major source of income I need, but there seems to be no equivalent in the DLI FTP collection.

-Question 1: What now? Any suggestions?
-Question 2: Let’s say instead that I just want average income by subdivision for all of Québec. Hunting around in the documentation and the data files of the DLI FTP for 1971 bst’s, I find that I can probably use the a2ecn001 file.
-Question 3: Am I right in guessing that the SPSS syntax:  <http://datalib.chass.utoronto.ca/cc71/cc71bsts.htm>
 file from UofT for a2ecn001 is basically just subdividing the bigger file in different “tables,” so I can totally just run the SPSS syntax file on the FTP version of a2ecn001?
-Question 4: Is there list in electronic format of the 1971 version of Québec subdivision names with geographic codes?

Answer


Question 1: There’s always the option of a custom data request from the regions.
Question 2: I think A2ECN002 would probably be a better choice as it includes income for males, females, Total pop 15+, Census families, etc and from what I can tell a2ecn001 seems to focus on males with income.
Question 3: See above answer.
Question 4: We do not have an electronic listing of 1971 CSDs. The best I can do is refer you to the following publications:

1971 Census of Canada Population Census Divisions and Subdivisions (Atlantic Provinces) Catalogue 92-704 VOL: 1-Part: 1 (BULLETIN 1.1-4)
1971 Census of Canada Population Census Divisions and Subdivisions (Quebec Catalogue 92-704 VOL: 1-Part: 1 (BULLETIN 1.1-5)
1971 Census of Canada Population Census Divisions and Subdivisions (Ontario) Catalogue 92-704 VOL: 1-Part: 1 (BULLETIN 1.1-6)
1971 Census of Canada Population Census Divisions and Subdivisions (Western Provinces) Catalogue 92-704 VOL: 1-Part: 1 (BULLETIN 1.1-7)"