Quality of Life: Social Environment Index

View this map

---

Abstract

The social environment represents the external conditions under which people engage in social activity within their community. It includes aspects of social opportunity, leisure and recreation, education, access to health services, health status and participation in democratic processes. Fourteen indicators have been used to assess aspects of quality of the social environment. Only communities (census subdivisions) with data for all indicators have been mapped.

---

This map shows the quality of the social environment: the environment in which people engage in social activities, within their community, that contribute to quality of life.

Indicators of the Social Environment

The following twelve indicators were used to assess the important aspects of the quality of the social environment.

Leisure and Recreation

• Number of leisure-related commercial activities per thousand people (direct)
• Number of libraries per thousand people (direct)

Social Opportunity and Mobility

• Ratio of female median income to male median income (direct)
• Male participation rate in workforce (direct)
• Female participation rate in workforce (direct)

Participation in Democratic Processes

• Percentage of the population that participated in the 1997 federal elections (direct)

Social Stability

• Ratio of percentage of population living in owned housing to percentage of population living in rental housing (direct)
• Percentage of population living at the same address they lived at five years earlier (direct)
• Percentage of population living at a different address than the one they lived at five years earlier (inverse)

Education

• Ratio of percentage of population with trade/college or university education to percentage of population less than Grade 9 education (direct)

Access to Health Resources

• Number of physician specialists per thousand people (direct)
• Number of family physicians per thousand people (direct)

Health Status

• Incidence of low birth weight per thousand people (inverse)
• Incidence of breast cancer per thousand people (inverse)

The national coverage for the health status indicators is less than that for the other indicators of the social environment. Consequently, a separate social environment index thematic map layer, called the social environment index (with health status), includes these data for a reduced number of communities in the index.

Methodology

Five classes have been used to map the quality of the social environment: low, fair, moderate, good and high. ‘Moderate’ quality of life can be seen as the average, whereas ‘low’ is well below the average and ‘high’ is well above average. A ‘low’ classification for a community implies that it scored low on all indicators of the social environment; conversely, a community with a ‘high’ classification more than likely scored above average on all indicators. The score for each community (or census subdivision) was calculated using a methodology called the standard score additive method. In this method, the data are standardized. The resulting values, called z-scores, were then added or subtracted, according to the direction of the indicator. The indicator direction is either inverse (–) or direct (+), where inverse indicates that a high value implies a lower quality of life; conversely, a high value for a direct relationship implies a higher quality of life.

Refer to the Data and Mapping Notes section for further details on the methodology and the rationale for choosing the indicators listed above to map the social environment.

Geographic Description

The map shows the variations in the quality of social environment in Canada, except for some areas in the Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories. Only communities with data for all the social environment indicators have been mapped. In the northern parts of most provinces, the quality of the social environment varies from fair to low. In the southern part of western Canada, communities generally score high to moderate, with more areas in British Columbia showing a wider variation than in the other three western provinces. Eastern Canada shows a more varied distribution, ranging from low to high, with the areas around the larger urban areas, such as Halifax and St. John’s, doing better than the more rural areas.

The pattern of the quality of the social environment of urban areas in the southern parts of Ontario and Quebec (Figure 1), particularly the areas from Windsor to Québec, clearly shows a good to high variation in the larger cities in the region as compared to the communities to the north in these two provinces.

[D]
Click for larger version, 307 KB
Figure 1. Distribution of the Quality of the Social Environment in the Area between Toronto and Québec

Use the various zoom mapping tools, found at the top of the map, to zoom into locations across Canada to compare the quality of the social environment from region to region, city to city or town to town. Use the Get Statistics tool to view the data used to derive the index value for each community. Alternatively, turn on one of the indicator thematic map layers to view the distribution of each indicator of the social environment. Each indicator is divided into five classes, with the average value falling in the middle and two classes occurring above and below. Table 1 is a comparison of the quality of the social environment among larger urban centres, with populations of greater than 150 000 in Canada.

Table 1. Quality of the Social Environment of Canada’s Most Populated Cities

For another perspective on the quality of the social environment, please request the following .xls file socc_e.xls from Contact Us to view the results of the metropolitan influence zone classification, used to classify municipalities (census subdivisions) that lie outside census metropolitan areas (CMAs) and census agglomerations (CAs), according to the degree of influence that CMA/CAs have on them. This classification precedes standardization of the data, prior to the addition of the z-scores. In this table, only communities (census subdivisions) with the same classification are compared to one another. Refer to the Data and Mapping Notes section for more information on the classification methodology.