Canadian Social Environment Typology: A new way to help measure health and social inequalities in Canada, 2020

Data used for this analysis included the de-identified preliminary COVID-19 deaths from Vital Statistics - Death Database occurring between January 1 and December 31, 2020, the Canadian Social Environment Typology data, and the 2016 Census of Population data calculated at census dissemination area (DA) level.

There are different ways to measure mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This analysis uses death certificates where COVID-19 is listed as the underlying cause of death. Statistics Canada and provincial and territorial vital statistics agencies use two codes to identify COVID-19 reported as a cause of death: U071 for COVID-19 specified as confirmed by a positive test result and U072 for COVID-19 described as "possible," "probable," or "pending a (positive) test result." The COVID-19 data in this study are preliminary, as they are not based on all deaths that occurred during the reference period because of reporting delays and because they do not include Yukon.

Further caution should be used when interpreting the results because demographic and socioeconomic information used to generate the typology were from the 2016 Census of Population, whereas the COVID-19 death data are from 2020. Please refer to the Census Dictionary, 2016 for detailed definitions of Census of Population concepts, variables, and geographic terms, as well as historical information.

The neighbourhood types used in this analysis are defined as the set of dissemination areas that are similar in terms of the selected characteristics (variables). A dissemination area is a small, relatively stable geographic unit composed of one or more adjacent dissemination blocks with an average population of 400 to 700 persons. This data set includes 43,144 dissemination areas from the census metropolitan areas (CMAs) and the census agglomeration areas out of 56,590 dissemination areas of Canada. The DAs for which either short form or long form data were not released for confidentiality or data quality issues by the census were removed from this analysis. The DAs from Indian reserves were also excluded from the analysis. The major characteristics of each type of neighbourhood used in the analysis are outlined below:

High socioeconomic status (SES) suburban neighbourhoods: Neighbourhoods in this cluster have medium population density but higher than average number of people per household; lower than average proportion of single parent families; high proportion of households with a university degree at bachelor's level or above; low unemployment rate and higher than average household income; higher than average proportion of people in managerial or professional occupations; high dwelling ownership rate and low proportion of households in need of major repair.

Low SES suburban neighbourhoods: Neighbourhoods in this cluster have relatively low population density; lower than average number of people per household but higher than average proportion of single parent families; very low proportion of households with a university degree at bachelor's level or above; very low proportion of recent immigrant population but higher than average proportion of Aboriginal population; relatively high proportion of labour force in manufacturing, and sales and service occupations; relatively low median dwelling value and low adjusted family income.

Senior or institutionalized population neighbourhoods: Neighbourhoods in this cluster have very small household size; very low proportion of population 14 years of age and under, but very high proportion of elderly population aged 65 years and above; very high proportion of institutionalized population; very high proportion of low-income households; very high proportion of government transfer of payment recipients; low dwelling ownership rate; and very low adjusted family income.

High SES urban neighbourhoods: Neighbourhoods in this cluster have very high population density and very low proportion of children 14 years of age and under; very small household size; very low proportion of labour force in manufacturing occupations but high proportion of population in professional occupations; higher than average proportion of households with a university degree; very low dwelling ownership rate and very high proportion of population spending more than 30% of income on housing costs; and higher than average dwelling value. Most of these DAs are located in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

Multicultural dense urban neighbourhoods: Neighbourhoods in this cluster have very high population density; relatively high proportion of population 14 years of age and under; very high proportion of lone parent families and very high proportion of government transfer of payment recipients; high unemployment rate; very high proportion of immigrants and recent immigrant population; high proportion of labour force working in sales and service related occupations; very low dwelling ownership rate; and very low adjusted family income. DAs in this cluster are mostly from the provinces of Quebec, Ontario and Alberta.

Large city South/East Asian concentrated neighbourhoods: Neighbourhoods in this cluster have high population density; very large household size; very high proportion of immigrant population and very high proportion of visible minorities of South and East Asian origin; very high proportion of the population not speaking either of the official languages of Canada; and very high dwelling value. DAs in this cluster are mostly from the Montréal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver CMAs.