Northern Quebec’s young population is booming due to high fertility rate

By Jane George

The Nord-du-Québec region of Northern Quebec, which includes Nunavik, the Cree region and the non-Indigenous communities to the south, is not like the rest of Quebec: it’s fast-growing and young.

That’s according to a new demographic report on Quebec, published last week by Quebec’s Institut de la Statistique du Québec.

The report, which looks at all 17 administrative regions in Quebec, said Northern Quebec presents several “distinctive features.”

First, the growth of the population is higher than in the rest of the Quebec, mainly due to a larger number of births than deaths.

The fertility rate for women in Northern Quebec is 2.6, which means each woman bears more than two children, while it’s only 1.54 overall in Quebec.

This same dynamic results in a population that is much younger than in the rest of Quebec, said the report, published in French only.

In 2017, the median age in Northern Quebec was 30.2 years, much younger than the median age of 41 years in other regions.

In Northern Quebec, only 8.1 per cent of the population is over 65 years, compared to 18.5 per cent in the rest of Quebec.

And the life expectancy is lower: it’s 74.2 years for men, compared to 80.1 years elsewhere, and 78.6 years for women compared to 84.1 years elsewhere.

The disparity in life expectancy would be even larger if data was included solely for Nunavik, but the above figures also include data from the Cree and non-Indigenous “Jamésien” populations of the region.

The report notes Nunavik now has 13,623 residents, up 18 per cent between 2011 to 2017, which makes it the fastest growing region in Quebec, because, unlike other regions, Nunavik has little growth from people moving to the region.