Families in Transition: The Impact of Family Relationships and Work on Mobility Patterns of Aboriginal People Living in Urban Centres across Canada

Abstract

The present analysis makes use of data taken from the public use micro data file (PUMF) from the 2012 Aboriginal Peoples Survey (APS) to examine the effects of various socioeconomic factors such as age, sex, education level, family composition (expressed by the number of children in the household), and total personal income on the mobility patterns of Aboriginal people living off-reserve across Canada. Two separate path analyses were conducted to evaluate critically the decomposition effects that these variables have on mobility. The results of the path analysis show that age is inversely related to mobility, meaning younger people move more frequently. However, contrary to other studies, this research analysis shows that age becomes less significant when we consider that people with higher levels of education are indeed more mobile than others, although the strength of this effect is actually mediated through personal income and family composition.