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A Study of Poverty and Working Poverty among Recent Immigrants to Canada

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3. Target population and groups of interest

In 2004, more than 2.1 million Canadians were either unattached recent immigrants of working age or part of a family including at least one adult who immigrated to Canada in the nineties or in the years 2000.

This study focuses on working-age Canadians, i.e. those aged 18-64. In particular, we are interested in immigrants the most vulnerable to poverty, namely "recent" immigrants, or in other words, to those who immigrated to Canada not a long time ago.³ To gain a better understanding of their working and living conditions, we will be comparing them to those of previous immigrant cohorts as well as native-born Canadians.

It is important to note that in each year's SLID a significant number of individuals do not report their immigration status or the year in which they immigrated. It is thus impossible to classify certain respondents in any of the three comparison groups referred to earlier (i.e. recent immigrants, earlier immigrants, native-born Canadians). As a result, in addition to age, a second sampling criterion was imposed. All of the observations for which there were missing values for the variables relating to immigration status and year of immigration were omitted.⁴

Table 1
Number of observations before and after sample selection criteria were imposed, 2004

	Weighted5	Unweighted
Total6	31,174,800	67,500
Persons aged 18-64	20,504,000	42,700
Persons aged 18-64 whose immigrant status and year of immigration are known	18,820,000	39,600

Among respondents who declared themselves as immigrants in 2004, the author had to determine which of them could be considered as recent immigrants. In the literature, the term "recent immigrant" is often used to refer to immigrants who have come to Canada within the previous five years. However, in studies that have a particular focus on low income among immigrants, this same term often refers to immigrants who have come to Canada within the previous ten years. Indeed, in these studies, it has been demonstrated that when compared to the rest of the Canadian population (including immigrants of previous cohorts), this group of immigrants is at particular risk of experiencing poverty over the short and the long term.

Because of a limited number of immigrants included in the SLID, the author chose to extend the number of years in which an immigrant can be considered as "recent" to 15 years in this study. After performing some tests⁷, it became obvious that even with this less restrictive criterion, vulnerability to low income was significantly higher for recent immigrants than for previous cohorts of immigrants and native-born Canadians. The author thus considered that a comparative analysis between immigrants who arrived in Canada within the past 15 years, earlier immigrants and native-born Canadians was appropriate to the study of poverty and working poverty in Canada.

Furthermore, other studies have shown that, compared with the rest of the population, immigrants are much more vulnerable to poverty, for at least ten years following their arrival, and that increasing economic difficulties of recent immigrants have been observed since the early 1990s. In extending the period of immigration to 15 years, the target population in 2004 includes all immigrants who have come to Canada since the beginning of the previous decade (i.e. since 1990). This makes the 15 year threshold even more relevant to the study of low income among immigrants in 2004.

In this study,

• A recent immigrant is defined as a person between the ages of 18 and 64 who has reported having immigrated to Canada between 1990 and the observation year, i.e. 2004.
• An earlier immigrant is a person aged 18-64 who has reported having immigrated to Canada before the 1990s.
• A native-born Canadian is a person aged 18-64 who is born in Canada.

According to the data from the SLID, there were nearly 19 million working-age individuals whose immigration status was known in 2004. Of those, 19% were in fact immigrants (see Chart 1). More than 40% of these immigrants could be identified as recent immigrants, since they came to Canada in the 90s and within the first decade of this millennium.

In 2004, the vast majority (92%) of working-age recent immigrants were part of a family of two members or more. In that year, a total of 544,000 Canadian families included at least one working-age recent immigrant and 58.4% of those families had children under the age of 18. In all, more than 2.1 million Canadians (or 7.9% of the targeted population)⁸ were either recent immigrants who did not live with relatives or were part of a recent immigrant family. Around 30% of that group consisted of children under the age of 18.

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³ Further in this section, the group of immigrants considered as recent immigrants in this study will be specified.

⁴ Since the omission of observations could have an impact on the representativeness of the selected sample, an analysis was conducted to verify whether this was the case in this study. The results of this analysis can be found in Annex A.

⁵ Since one of the purposes of this study is to provide further information about the labour market status of recent immigrants according to their economic situation, a weight adjusted for non-response to the interview on work was used. It should be noted, however, that, despite the use of weights adjusted for non-response, missing values remain for certain work-related variables from the SLID. The reason that missing values remain is that adjusted weights were produced for all individuals who were part of a family in which at least one member responded to the interview on work, even when some of them could not be reached. All individuals who did not respond to the interview on work but who were part of a family in which at least one member responded were thus assigned a positive weight for "work" but were placed in the missing value category. Since recent immigrants are especially likely to be part of a family with several members, there are more missing values for the variables relating to work among this group.

⁶ The target population for the SLID excludes residents of the Territories, institutional residents, and persons living on Indian reserves. All together, these exclusions account for less than 3% of the population, according to Statistics Canada. For further details, see: http://www.statcan.ca/cgibin/imdb/p2SV_f.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=3889&lang=fr&db=IMDB&dbg=f&adm=8&dis=2

⁷ See annex B to obtain more details on the results of these tests.

⁸ In this study, the population of interest includes all Canadians living in a family that includes at least one person aged 18-64 whose immigration status was known (in 2004, 26,908,600 individuals met these criteria).

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Date Modified:

2007-07-19