Question
I have a faculty member preparing a brief for City Council regarding a proposed heritage designation for a small downtown neighbourhood in Halifax, consisting of Dissemination Blocks 12090855009, 12090854004, 12090854003 and 12090965001. He is looking for any data that may show the array of incomes within this small area, which he hypothesizes to be a very wide spread (from poor students to wealthy homeowners).
We have some data of this sort, from the NHS 2011, at the level of Dissemination Areas, but, as always, the smaller DB geography is needed if possible. I’ve also found household income ranges by postal routes, but postal route geography is also larger than the dissemination blocks that constitute this neighbourhood.
Is there any way in which income data (households or individuals, averages, medians, etc.) at the level of these DBs might be made available to a client?
Response
According to the 2016 Census Dictionary: Only population and dwelling counts are disseminated at the dissemination block level (with the dissemination area being the smallest standard geographic area for which characteristic data are disseminated). The Chief from the Tax Section of ISD confirmed that the 2 possible geographic options using tax data would be the DA or postal code.
Furthermore, the Data Quality and Confidentiality Standard and Guidelines for the 2011 NHS states that income data is suppressed when an area has a population less than 250 or the number of private households is less than 40.
I’m currently checking with the regional office to confirm that by combining DB’s together both the population and household requirements are met so they should be able to get the information that you’re looking for.
