Home Ownership and Spacious Homes: Equity under Stress in Early-Twentieth-Century Canada

Abstract

This article attempts to contribute to a burgeoning literature on Canadian housing history. It approaches the nature of housing by linking two measurements often examined in isolation: ownership and interior space. Using data from the Canadian Families Project’s 5 percent random sample of the nominal census returns for Canada in 1901, this article presents the first national analysis comparing housing ownership and housing space in both rural and urban Canada. It attempts to determine, via a series of logistic regressions, the relative importance of several social and economic variables on a family’s chances of owning a home and of living in a crowded or relatively spacious environment. The article demonstrates that the social and economic influences on the chances of ownership differed in some significant ways from the influences on the chances of living in a spacious home.