IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v41y2004i1p117-149.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decomposing Canada's Growing Housing Affordability Problem: Do City Differences Matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Andrejs Skaburskis

    (School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen's University, 539 Policy Studies Building, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6. skabursk@fred.surp.queensu.ca)

Abstract

This article examines the role of eight factors that affect the prevalence and incidence of housing affordability problems: geography, demography, migration/immigration/ ethnicity, income recipients, income source, employment and education. It develops bivariate probit models that use the 1991 and 1996 Canadian census public use microdata to predict the joint probability that a household spends more than half of its income on housing and that its income is below the poverty line. The conclusions show that city and regional differences are negligible after the effects of the factors common to all the cities have been accounted for. Changing employment levels and sources of household income are the most important factors explaining the prevalence and growth of housing poverty. While single parents have the highest incidence, the growth of the problem is mostly in the young non-family households. Migration, immigration and ethnicity play a role that is independent of the other factors. Education has almost no effect. The changes are in the underlying structures and in the variable profiles that differ remarkably across the factors. There were minor adjustments in the demographic and occupational profiles that would tend to reduce the problem but these are unlikely to stem its growth in the foreseeable future.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrejs Skaburskis, 2004. "Decomposing Canada's Growing Housing Affordability Problem: Do City Differences Matter?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 41(1), pages 117-149, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:41:y:2004:i:1:p:117-149
    DOI: 10.1080/0042098032000155713
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/0042098032000155713
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0042098032000155713?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Drolet, Marie & Morissette, Rene, 2000. "To What Extent Are Canadians Exposed to Low Income?," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2000146e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    2. Fortin, Nicole M, 1995. "Allocation Inflexibilities, Female Labor Supply, and Housing Assets Accumulation: Are Women Working to Pay the Mortgage?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(3), pages 524-557, July.
    3. John M. Quigley & Steven Raphael & Eugene Smolensky, 2001. "Homeless In America, Homeless In California," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(1), pages 37-51, February.
    4. Stephen Malpezzi & Richard K. Green, 1996. "What Has Happened to the Bottom of the US Housing Market?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 33(10), pages 1807-1820, December.
    5. J. Rothenberg, 1975. "An Approach to the Modelling of Urban Housing Markets," Working papers 149, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    6. A. Skaburskis, 1981. "Determinants of Canadian Housing Stock Losses," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 9(2), pages 181-184, June.
    7. Myles, John, 2000. "The Maturation of Canada's Retirement Income System: Income Levels, Income Inequality and Low Income Among the Elderly," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2000147e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    8. Park, June Ying Shann-Hwa, 2000. "Increased Homelessness and Low Rent Housing Vacancy Rates," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1-2), pages 76-103, March.
    9. Philippe Thalmann, 1999. "Identifying Households which Need Housing Assistance," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 36(11), pages 1933-1947, October.
    10. Myles Zyblock & Zhengxi Lin, 2000. "Trickling Down or Fizzling Out? Economic Performance, Transfers, Inequality, and Low Income in Canada," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 9(2), pages 1-1, December.
    11. Krishna Pendakur, 2001. "Consumption Poverty in Canada, 1969 to 1998," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 27(2), pages 125-149, June.
    12. Eric Fong & Kumiko Shibuya, 2000. "The spatial separation of the poor in Canadian cities," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 37(4), pages 449-459, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yasmine Essafi & Raphaël Languillon & Arnaud Simon, 2017. "The Relation between Aging and Housing Prices A Key Indicator for the French Spatial Wealth Reshaping [La relation Vieillissement-Prix immobiliers : un indicateur clé pour la réorganisation spatial," Working Papers halshs-01654445, HAL.
    2. Ben-Shahar, Danny & Gabriel, Stuart & Golan, Roni, 2019. "Housing affordability and inequality:A consumption-adjusted approach," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-1.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kröll, Alexandra & Farhauer, Oliver, 2012. "Examining the roots of homelessness: The impact of regional housing market conditions and the social environment on homelessness in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany," IAB-Discussion Paper 201213, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    2. Wataru Suzuki, 2008. "What determines the spatial distribution of homeless people in Japan?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(13), pages 1023-1026.
    3. Kevin Milligan, 2008. "The Evolution of Elderly Poverty in Canada," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(s1), pages 79-94, November.
    4. Shinichiro Iwata & Koji Karato, 2007. "Homeless Networks: Testing Peer and Homed Networks Against Location Choice," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-522, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    5. Michael R. Veall, 2008. "Canadian Seniors and the Low Income Measure," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(s1), pages 47-58, November.
    6. John M. Quigley & Steven Raphael, 2004. "Is Housing Unaffordable? Why Isn't It More Affordable?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 191-214, Winter.
    7. Picot, Garnett & Myles, John, 2005. "Income Inequality and Low Income in Canada: an International Perspective," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2005240e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    8. Alexandra Kröll & Oliver Farhauer, 2016. "Examining homelessness in Germany: The impact of regional housing market conditions on homelessness in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95, pages 51-69, March.
    9. Ron Kneebone, 2018. "Housing, Homelessness and Poverty," SPP Briefing Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 11(29), November.
    10. Darcy Rollins & Alicia Sasser & Robert Tannenwald & Bo Zhao, 2006. "The lack of affordable housing in New England: how big a problem?: why is it growing?: what are we doing about it?," New England Public Policy Center Working Paper 06-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    11. Alexandra Kröll & Oliver Farhauer, 2012. "Examining the Roots of Homelessness - The Impact of Regional Housing Market Conditions and the Social Environment on Homelessness in Germany," ERSA conference papers ersa12p370, European Regional Science Association.
    12. Ron Kneebone & Margarita Wilkins, 2021. "Local Conditions and the Prevalence of Homelessness in Canada," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 14(28), October.
    13. Perugini, Cristiano, 2020. "Patterns and drivers of household income dynamics in Russia: The role of access to credit," BOFIT Discussion Papers 11/2020, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    14. Núria Rodríguez‐Planas, 2018. "Mortgage finance and culture," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 786-821, September.
    15. Michael R. Veall, 2007. "Which Canadian Seniors Are Below the Low-Income Measure?," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 186, McMaster University.
    16. Cheal, David & Kampen, Karen, 1997. "Complementarity in the labor supply of husbands and wives," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 495-512.
    17. Shahateet, Mohammed & Al-Tayyeb, Saud, 2007. "Regional consumption inequalities in Jordan: Empirical study," MPRA Paper 57400, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Sam Norris & Krishna Pendakur, 2013. "Imputing rent in consumption measures, with an application to consumption poverty in Canada, 1997-2009," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1537-1570, November.
    19. David Aristei & Cristiano Perugini, 2022. "Credit and income mobility in Russia," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 639-669, September.
    20. Chris Sarlo, 2007. "Measuring Poverty – What Happened To Copenhagen?," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 6-14, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:41:y:2004:i:1:p:117-149. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.