The Residential Crowding of Immigrants in Canada, 1971-2001

Michael Haan, University of Alberta

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. The purpose of this paper is to determine 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 ). Additionally, the prospect of changing effects over time for several factors is also assessed. The main findings of the paper are that basic household characteristics explain a significant portion of the 30-year immigrant/Canadian-born divergence, and that including time interactions reveals that differences in propensities across CMAs emerged post-1971. Interestingly, time interactions also reveal that there have been nearly no significant changes in the propensity to crowd among visible minority groups since 1971.