The Residential Crowding of Immigrants in Canada, 1971–2001

Abstract

Although rates of residential crowding in Canada declined between 1971 and 2001, the drop for immigrants was not nearly as pronounced as it was for the Canadian-born. This paper determines the extent to which the differential trends in residential crowding can be attributed to changes in educational attainment, household composition, economic characteristics (including housing values), Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) of residence, and skin colour (visible minority status). The prospect of changing effects over time for several factors is also assessed. There are two main findings. The first is that basic household characteristics explain a significant portion of the 30-year immigrant/Canadian-born divergence. Secondly, including time interactions reveals that differences in propensities across CMAs emerged post-1971, and that there have been almost no significant changes in the propensity to crowd among visible minority groups since then.