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For the first time since 1981, Census 2016 omitted the distinction between married and cohabiting parents with regards to children’s living arrangements. Cardus Family made a special request for this data and offers several reasons why we ought to return to distinguishing between marriage and cohabitation with every census release. So there are significant policy implications in these numbers?

One author answer :”Very significant. Although we didn’t highlight this in the report, marriage rates are correlated with fertility rates. So if we have a fertility problem now, and low fertility, we could expect that to get much worse with lower marriage rates. We did highlight the different financial behaviours of marriage versus cohabitation, and married parents versus cohabiting parents.

You see a greater degree of sharing finances between married parents, and that is true even in Quebec where cohabitation has largely been taken on as kind of the same as marriage, it’s very de-stigmatized, it’s more or less a normal family form. So, fertility rate, education outcomes, financial and poverty outcomes….” .

Very simple, marriage is the best family form for children. And yet, as think tank Cardus has reported, the 2016 census found that only 62% of children up to age 14 were living with two married parents – a dramatic decline from the 73% who lived in such homes in 1996. The decline in marriage is countered by the increase in parents who are not married but living together. That accounts for 17% of children’s living arrangements.