The places we'll go: How have rural residents changed over time?

Abstract

An increasingly key consideration in Canadian immigration policy is rural settlement patterns. As Canada’s largest census metropolitan areas (CMAs) continue to see increases in overall population, smaller and mid-sized communities face greater challenges in attracting and retaining newcomers as a means of economic and population improvements. As such, it is becoming increasingly important to look at the characteristics of individuals who opt for rural settlement in order to improve the outcomes of future attraction initiatives. While a substantial body of literature looks at the movement of immigrants and native-born Canadians across the country, far fewer look at the characteristics that positively predict rural settlement. This study helps to close the knowledge gap by investigating these characteristics and how they change over a 25-year period, using two identical logistic regression models and a pooled cross-sectional model based on the 1991 and 2016 Canadian Census. Overall, age, lower levels of education and income, as well as non-immigrant and non-visible minority statuses lead to higher propensities for rural living. However, the general trend is a move away from rural settlement in favour of larger cities.