Economic and Social Reports

Spotlight on data and research

What do we know about physical and non-physical childhood maltreatment in Canada?

About 6 in 10 individuals living in Canada reported experiencing some type of child maltreatment before they were 15 years old (59.7%). Studies have shown that child maltreatment is associated with poorer health and socioeconomic outcomes later in life. In Canada, national-level estimates have mainly focused on physical types of child maltreatment (e.g., physical abuse, sexual abuse). This study provides new information about different types of child maltreatment, including non-physical (e.g., emotional abuse, exposure to intimate partner violence, physical neglect).

Nearly one-third of individuals reported experiencing only non-physical child maltreatment (32.3%), followed by over 2 in 10 who reported experiencing both non-physical and physical maltreatment (23.3%). Experiencing only physical maltreatment was the least prevalent type of child maltreatment reported (4.1%).

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Research articles

Official language proficiency and immigrant labour market outcomes: Evidence from test-based multi-dimensional measures of language skills

Studies have demonstrated that higher proficiency in the destination-country language improves immigrant labour market outcomes. However, previous studies have mainly drawn on subjective measures of language proficiency. This study examines the effects of test-based measures of official language proficiency in four dimensions — listening, speaking, reading and writing —on employment and earnings of economic principal applicants.

While the analysis showed little effect on economic immigrants’ employment outcomes, the effects on earnings were much stronger for each of the four dimensions of test-based language measures than those of the self-reported measure, indicating that using the latter can considerably underestimate the effect of language skills on earnings.

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Survey framing and mode effects in life satisfaction responses on Canadian social surveys

How survey respondents answer subjective questions, such as how they rate their satisfaction with life as a whole, may be influenced by features of the survey itself. Survey framing effects occur when respondents’ answers are influenced by the theme or content of the survey, while a mode effect is when respondents’ answers are influenced by the method used to collect survey data (e.g. with an interviewer, through an online collection portal, etc.). In this article, the impacts of these effects on life satisfaction responses are estimated across three Statistics Canada survey series: the General Social Survey (GSS), the Canadian Community Health Survey, and the Canadian Social Survey.

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