Microsimulation of educational trends by ethno-cultural group and gender in Canada

Over the last several decades Canada has experienced a considerable educational expansion. With each successive birth cohort, the proportion of those graduating from high school and attaining post-secondary education has increased. While this upward trend can be observed for all ethno-cultural groups, the relative differences between groups turn out to be remarkably persistent over many decades.

This paper presents the analytical findings underlying the modeling of educational progression in Statistics Canada’s population projection microsimulation model PopSim. We differentiate between 13 ethno-cultural groups by visible minority and aboriginal status. These groups are further broken down by gender and place of birth. The differences in educational attainment between groups follow more complex historical patterns for immigrants compared to those born in Canada. Also, within some visible minority groups, the gender differences are reversed in favour of women for those born in Canada compared to immigrants. Overall, however, the most noticeable finding is the high persistence over time of the relative difference in educational attainment between all studied groups, with no major changes having occurred over the past twenty years.
The modeling approach combines event-history models (based on retrospective educational biographies collected in the General Social Survey) with cross-sectional analyses of Census data. In the context of the PopSim microsimulation model, accounting for the education differences found between the studied ethno-cultural groups allows us to capture important compositional effects in an increasingly diverse Canadian population and labour force.