A residence room at McMaster University in this 2002 file photo.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
In recent decades, Canadian families have gotten smaller, and houses have gotten bigger.
In 1986, the typical Canadian child in a two-parent family lived in a home with seven rooms. (Here "typical" means "median in the census public-use files, as calculated by the author.") Twenty years later, in 2006, that typical two-parent family home had expanded to eight rooms -- and almost a quarter of children in two-parent families lived in houses with ten or more rooms.
Children in lone-parent families have smaller homes, on average, but these too have expanded. In 1986, 33 per cent of children in lone-parent families lived in homes with seven or more rooms. By 2006, that number had grown by one third, to 44 per cent.
Yet these ever expanding homes are housing smaller families. Most of the decline in Canadian fertility rates happened in the earlier part of the 20th century, but even between 1986 and 2006 families shrunk slightly. In 2006, the average child in a two-parent family lived with 3.4 other people -- the average child in a lone-parent family with 2.2 others.
The result of growing houses and shrinking families? In 2006, the average child lived in a house with 1.9 rooms per person.
Which makes moving into university residence a bit of a shock.
Many Canadian university residences were built decades ago. Double rooms were -- and are -- cheaper to build than singles, so abound across the country. In years gone by, students might not have liked sharing a room in residence. But if they had grown up sharing a bedroom with a brother or sister, living with someone else was, at least, a familiar experience.
But undergraduates who have grown up in homes with 10 or more rooms may find it harder to share their space.
Author's note: This post is for all of the students and parents filling out university residence applications right now, and for everyone who wondered "What possible use is that question on the National Household Survey about the number of rooms in my home?"
Frances Woolley is a professor of economics at Carleton University, where she teaches public finance.
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