Age‐at‐arrival differences in home‐ownership attainment among immigrants and their foreign‐born offspring in Canada

Abstract

This paper asks whether age at arrival matters when it comes to home‐ownership attainment among immigrants, paying particular attention to householders' self‐identification as a visible minority. Combining methods that were developed separately in the immigrant housing and the immigrant offspring literatures, this study shows the importance of recognising generational groups based on age at arrival, while also accounting for the interacting effects of current age (or birth cohorts) and arrival cohorts. The paper advocates a (quasi‐)longitudinal approach to studying home‐ownership attainment among immigrants and their foreign‐born offspring. Analysis of data from the Canadian Census reveals that foreign‐born householders who immigrated as adults in the 1970s and the 1980s are more likely to be home‐owners than their counterparts who immigrated at a younger age when they self‐identify as South Asian or White, but not always so when they self‐identify as Chinese or as ‘other visible minority’. The same bifurcated pattern recurs between householders who immigrated at secondary‐school age and those who were younger upon arrival. Age at arrival therefore emerges as a variable of significance to help explain differences in immigrant housing outcomes, and should be taken into account in future studies of immigrant home‐ownership attainment. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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