Canada

The 2001 census found that Canada has a population of 31 million people who are heavily concentrated in communities located within 100 miles of the Canada–United States border. There is further concentration of the population in cities and towns, as over 60 percent of all Canadians live in the twenty-five metropolitan areas that have populations of over 100,000, and 80 percent live in urban areas. Despite their vast landmass, the three northern territories (Yukon, Northwest Territory, and Nunavut) contain only about three-tenths of one percent of the total population. Like all other industrialized countries, Canada experienced significant aging of its population over the twentieth century. In 2001, 12.6 percent of the population was over age sixty-five (very similar to the United States, where 12.4 percent was over the age of sixty-five). As the size of the older population has increased, interest in aging and the place of older people in Canadian society has grown.