Study: Life satisfaction among recent immigrants in Canada: Comparisons with source-country populations and the Canadian-born
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Released: 2014-12-10
A new study finds that most groups of recent immigrants in Canada have higher levels of life satisfaction than their peers still living in their country of origin. On a scale of 0 or 1 to 10 where '10' means 'very satisfied,' recent immigrants from 36 of 43 countries had life satisfaction scores that were at least 0.5 points higher than that of their source-country populations.
The study used the life satisfaction responses that recent immigrants and persons born in Canada provided on two nationally representative household surveys: the General Social Survey (2008 to 2011) and the Canadian Community Health Survey (2009 to 2011). Life satisfaction responses from source country populations were drawn from Waves 3 to 5 of the World Values Survey. In this study, recent immigrants were defined as those who arrived in Canada within the last 10 years.
Recent immigrants from 12 countries, such as Romania, Pakistan, Ukraine and Iraq, had life satisfaction scores that were at least 2.0 points higher than that of their source-country populations, while recent immigrants from another 16 countries, such as the Philippines, South Korea, France, Russia, India, and Morocco, had life satisfaction scores that were 1.0 to 1.9 points higher than that of their source-country populations. Recent immigrants in Canada generally had life satisfaction scores that ranged from 7.5 to 8.5 out of 10.
When socio-demographic characteristics, including age, sex, marital status, education, health status, and urban residence were taken into account, the gap in life satisfaction between recent immigrants and source country populations narrowed slightly, suggesting that national-level conditions play a role in the life satisfaction of immigrants.
Life satisfaction scores varied much less across immigrant groups in Canada than they did across source-country populations, suggesting that life satisfaction both increased and converged as immigrants resided in Canada.
The life satisfaction scores of recent immigrants from nine source countries were significantly lower than those of the Canadian-born population. When additional characteristics, such as household income and home ownership were taken into account, recent immigrants from four countries—Bangladesh, China, Iran and Bulgaria—had significantly lower levels of life satisfaction than the Canadian-born.
The research paper "Life Satisfaction among Recent Immigrants in Canada: Comparisons with Source-country Populations and the Canadian-born," part of the Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series (Catalogue number11F0019M), is now available from the Browse by key resource module of our website under Publications.
Similar studies are available in the Update on Social Analysis Research module of our website.
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