Household Formation in Canada and the United States: Insights Into Differences by Race, Ethnicity, Immigrant Populations, and Country

This study focuses on the most changeable component of housing demand in the future-the immigrant and minority groups, aged 25-75. Using the Canadian Census and the American Community Survey (ACS) across periods between 2006-2016, we compare headship and home ownership rates of both immigrants and native-born Whites in Canada and the U.S. We model the probability of being a renter-head, owner-head, or non-household head by fitting a multinomial logistic regression, controlling for several individual and contextual variables for both countries. We find that most immigrant groups have had similar patterns of household formation in the two countries and that, while immigrants have shown upward mobility in the housing market, those in Canada have progressed more quickly than in the U.S.