Are Baby Boomers Likely to Retire to the City in Canada?
Due to the size of the baby-boomer generation, the question of where they will retire has important transportation planning implications. If they are to remain in the suburbs in retirement, this will have very different consequences than if they move to urban, transit-rich neighbourhoods – a possibility that has been raised frequently in recent years. This paper addresses the issue by looking at movers from Canadian microcensus data over 20 years and 4 censuses for Canada’s six largest cities. While concentrating on Canadian cities, the paper develops a robust approach to evaluate the evolution of where retirees (or any age-group) have been moving, and how these trends might continue into the future. It does so by introducing a continuous Urban Core Index to classify census tracts as being part of the “Urban Core” or not. Then, disaggregate data on movers for the censuses of 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006 are analysed in three phases. First they are analysed graphically, then with a trend analysis and finally through the use of logistic regression. Logistic regression models are used to compare the evolution of the effect that being over 65 has on the odds of choosing to live in the “Urban Core.” Clear trends of 65+ movers increasingly moving to the suburbs are observed for three of the cities (Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton). For the other three cities such an increasing trend of choosing to move to the suburbs is not so clearly observed. At the same time and based on the observed trends, it does not appear that future retirees (and namely the baby boomers) are about to change previous patterns and move increasingly to the city.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB40(2) Integrated Transportation and Land Use Modeling.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Patterson, Zachary
- Saddier, Simon
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2013-1-13 to 2013-1-17
- Date: 2013
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 14p
- Monograph Title: TRB 92nd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Census; Methodology; Regression analysis; Retirement; Urban areas
- Uncontrolled Terms: Moving
- Geographic Terms: Canada
- Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society; I21: Planning of Transport Infrastructure; I70: Traffic and Transport;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01478676
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 13-5183
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Apr 17 2013 2:12PM