Nunavut still Canada’s youngest, fastest growing jurisdiction: Statistics Canada

An inside look at what Canada’s population looks like reveals that Nunavut is a jurisdiction unlike any other in the country: it’s growing faster and has a much younger population.

Nunavut’s population posted an increase of almost 800 residents or 23 per 1,000 residents in 2010, says a demographic report released July 20 from Statistics Canada.

Number-crunching shows Nunavut can lay claim the highest population growth rate in the country, more than twice the overall rate of growth in Canada.

Natural increase, that is, 700 births, accounted for most of Nunavut’s growth.

The population of Nunavut had risen from 26,600 in 1999 to 33,300 on Jan. 1, 2011.

Also on that date, Canada’s population was estimated at 34,278,400, up more than 375,600 people from 2010. This population increase represents a growth of 11 per 1,000 residents in 2010, down slightly from 11.7 per 1,000 the year before.

The July 20 report, which updates the demographics or statistical characteristics of Canada, also shows Nunavut’s population is Canada’s youngest.

The median age of the aging Canadian population on July 1, 2010 was 39.7 years, up from 26.2 in 1971.

But Nunavut even beats that.

As of July 1, 2010, Canada’s youngest population was in Nunavut, where the median age was 24.6 years — although it had increased a little from the same date in 2009.

In Nunavut, children 14 and under also represented more than three in 10 residents, close to double the national proportion of children 14 and under.

Nunavut had the lowest percentage of older people in Canada, with only three per cent of the population 65 years and over. People aged 65 and over accounted for 14.1 per cent of the Canadian population.

Between 2006 and 2008 period, the total fertility rate — or the average number of children born to each woman — was very close to three children per woman in Nunavut — down from more than three in 1999.

The youngest average age when a mother first gives birth can also be found in Nunavut — 22.1 years.

Nunavut also had the highest share of all births among young women aged 15 to 19: more than one in five of all births are born to teenaged girls in Nunavut.

Overall, the annual birth rate for every 1,000 women in Nunavut, that is how many babies are born every year to 1,000 women in the population, was 25.5, more than twice the rate in Ontario where there are only about 11 babies born to every 1,000 women in the province.

As well, 400 people moved from other provinces to Nunavut in 2010.