The Decline of the Immigrant Home-ownership Advantage: Life-cycle,Declining Fortunes and Changing Housing Careers in Montreal,Toronto and Vancouver,1981-2001
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online November, 2005
The Decline of the Immigrant Home-ownership Advantage: Life-cycle,Declining Fortunes and Changing Housing Careers in Montreal,Toronto and Vancouver,1981-2001
In the past, working-age immigrant families in Canada's large urban centres had higher home-ownership rates than the Canadian-born. Over the past 20 years, however, this advantage has reversed, due jointly to a drop in immigrant rates and a rise in the popularity of home-ownership among the Canadian-born. This paper assesses the efficacy of a fairly standard microeconomic consumer choice model, which includes indicators for age, income, education, family type and immigrant characteristics, plus several interactions with time, to explain these changes. It is found that the standard model almost completely explains the immigrant homeownership advantage in 1981, as well as the rise in home-ownership rates over time among the Canadian-born. Even after accounting for the well-known decline in immigrant economic fortunes, however, it is shown that only about half of the 1981-2001 immigrant change in homeownership rates is explained by the standard model.
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