Is gateway city clustering behind Canada's declining immigrant home-ownership rates?

Abstract

Recently, home-ownership rates have been dropping for Canadian immigrants. These declines, although substantial in their own right, are particularly striking when read alongside the trends of the Canadian-born, who've experienced a comparative surge in recent years. Given that immigrants overwhelmingly cluster in Canada's 'gateway' census metropolitan areas (CMAs) of Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver, this paper uses 2-stage least squares regression techniques and the 2001 Census of Canada to identify whether a shift out of Canada's gateway CMAs would improve immigrant home-ownership rates. The results show that although home-ownership propensities are higher for those who live outside of gateway cities, these differences dissolve once the endogeneity of location choice is considered. This suggests that relocation policies are unlikely to yield dramatic national gains. © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.