Health Inequities in Manitoba: Is the Socioeconomic Gap

Chapter 2: A Description of the Neighbourhood Income Quintiles using Census Data
16 University of Manitoba
suppressed or zero. Of those, 31 DAs had less than 40 residents. Income measures are not reported in
the census if the population size of the DA is fewer than 250 residents or 40 households. If a DA contains
at least 40 non–institutionalized people, but less than 250 people, other census characteristics will be
reported but the DA will have an average household income of zero. After imputation, only six DAs
were categorized as income “not found” (NF) with a population of 830 individuals. In the Repository
data, the number of people in the NF group for the 2006 Manitoba population is slightly higher than
the NF group for the 2006 census. If an individual’s postal code is not included in the PCCF, then their
postal code cannot be linked to a DA and thus the neighbourhood income quintile of the individual
remains NF. So, in other chapters a higher percentage of the population has been categorized as not
found. Another limitation of the method used to assign neighbourhood income quintiles to DAs was
that the census population distribution across neighbourhood income quintiles was not as equal as
when the Repository population is assigned neighbourhood income quintiles, particularly in the rural
DAs. One main difference between the two methods is that assignment of the Repository population
to neighbourhood income quintiles excludes DAs where the majority (greater than 90%) of residents
reside in institutions such as personal care homes or prisons. Also, the smaller range of neighbourhood
income values within rural areas could make subtle differences in population distributions more
apparent in the census population. However, despite the neighbourhood income quintile distribution
for the rural census DAs not being exactly 20% in each, this linking technique was the best approach
given the limited linkage possibilities of the census to other data sources.
To determine the overall mean values for the following tables, the population weighted average of
the DAs in each neighbourhood income quintile was calculated. For example, as the total average
household income for a given neighbourhood income quintile is comprised of several DAs, the
following calculation was necessary:
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Tables 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 represent census data from each decade—1986, 1996, and 2006. Note that
information is missing for 14 First Nations communities in 1986, two First Nations communities in
1996, and no information is missing in 2006. Therefore, a comparison over time of the percentage of
Aboriginal people (especially in R1) is not accurate, given the problem of missing First Nations data in
1986 and 1996 (and thus there would presumably be an underestimate of the percentage of Aboriginal
for 1986 and 1996).