9. DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS

Approximately three in five respondents (63 per cent) indicated that they are currently employed in some capacity, whether it be full-time, part-time, self-employed, casual, or on leave. A total of 11 per cent are unemployed, and 26 per cent are not in the labour force. These figures do not vary significantly from on-reserve data collected in 2001 and 2002 INAC First Nations Surveys.⁵

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Regarding household composition, 65 to 71 per cent of respondents live in households with children at home6 and the majority of these (50 per cent) are part of a couple. Approximately one in eight respondents is either a sole adult living at home with a child, or part of a couple without a child. Relatively few respondents live in homes that include three or more generations, live with relatives other than their parents, or live with other unrelated persons. This overall picture of household composition mirrors that seen in March 2002, although the proportion of households that include more than one adult with a child(ren) may have increased (potentially owing to a change in categories between the two surveys).

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Eighty-five per cent of the respondents who have children in their home have children under the age of eighteen. Nearly four in ten households with children (37 per cent) include children under the age of five, while one-half (51 per cent) have children in the home between the ages of five and seventeen.

Regarding the location of children's schooling, two-thirds of respondents have children in their home who are attending a school on-reserve, while 37 per cent have children who attend public school off-reserve. One in ten respondents have children at home who are not attending school at all.

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Approximately one-half (51 per cent) of respondents indicated that English is the language they first learned in childhood and still understand. Another 44 per cent of respondents reported an Aboriginal mother tongue (Cree is the most common Aboriginal language first learned and still understood). Essentially the same percentages were captured in the two earlier First Nations surveys. The similarities between current and recent on-reserve data also remain consistent with population data from the 1996 Statistics Canada Census7 previously provided by INAC. According to this data, equal proportions of the Aboriginal population (47 per cent) stated that English and Aboriginal languages were the languages first learned in childhood and still understood.

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Overall, 43 per cent of survey respondents hold less than a high school diploma, while 34 per cent report some level of post secondary education. When compared to past results collected in 2001, the proportion of those with post-secondary education has increased by eight per cent (likely a function of self-selection bias in the panel portion of the sample, whereby the more educated survey respondents from the previous surveys where more apt to respond again in this survey). Based on 1996 Census figures the current survey sample under represents those with lower levels of education.

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Nearly one-third of respondents (32 per cent) report an annual household income of $20,000 or less. While approximately four in ten have an annual household income above $30,000, most of these (21 per cent) earn between $30,000 and $40,000 annually. Although income figures from the previous two surveys have over-represented the lowest income earners8 (those under $10,000), this most recent data is more consistent with Aboriginal population data.

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When asked to rate their own level of literacy compared with others, using the examples of reading a newspaper and filling out forms, two in three First Nations people living on-reserve rate themselves as above average (64 per cent). Only five per cent rate themselves as below average. While this distribution is statistically impossible, it indicates the level of comfort (and confidence) that people have with their literacy. By comparison, in a general public survey conducted in May of 2001, 90 per cent of Canadians rated their literacy skills as above average, ten per cent rated them as average and only one per cent rated them as below average.

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• First Nations residents of reserves are more likely to rate their literacy as above average if they have higher levels of income and education, are under 41 years of age, have a French or English mothertongue, and/or are employed. It is also more likely among those who send their children to schools off-reserve, as well as among those who report having contacted the Government of Canada in the past three months.

Given that the sample for the current survey was stratified to evenly represent all provinces/regions in the country, it is not surprising to see this type of even distribution. As indicated below, residents from the Atlantic are particularly over represented in the survey. As reported in the first chapter, the survey results were weighted to reflect the normal distribution of the population by province/region in the analysis.

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The (unweighted) age distribution indicates that 15 per cent of respondents are under 25, 49 per cent are between the ages of 25 and 44, 16 per cent are between 45 and 54, and 19 per cent are over the age of 55. With the exception of slightly under-representing those between the ages of 16 and 24, these figures parallel population figures.

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