Proceedings of 9th International Business and Social Science Research Conference
6 - 8 January, 2014, Novotel World Trade Centre, Dubai, UAE, ISBN: 978-1-922069-41-2
The Impact of Immigration on Housing Market in Canada: A Panel
Data Analysis
Ehsan Latif
Statement of problems or research question:
Immigration has been a very important contributor to Canada’s population growth. From 2001 to
2012, Canada received on average 247,402 immigrants per year, and in 2012-2013 immigration
accounted for two-thirds of the country’s population growth. Given the importance of immigration in
Canadian economy, a significant number of studies have examined immigration issues particularly
on the impacts of immigration in Canadian labour market. A less studied area is the impact of
immigration on housing market. In recent times, particularly during the great recession of 20072009, housing market was an issue of intense discussion. The objective of this study is to examine
the impact of immigration on:
Housing price in Canada
Rent in Canada
Very brief statement of methodology and sample period:
The study uses provincial data from the Statistics Canada covering a period from 1983 to 2010.
To examine the impact of immigration on housing price and rent, this study utilizes panel data
framework. More specifically, the study estimates regressions using following methods:
1.
Pooled Ordinary Least Square
2.
Fixed Effects Regression
3.
Instrumental Variable Fixed Effects Regression
A short statement of findings and conclusion:
The results show that immigration has a significant positive impact on housing price. The results
further show that unemployment rate has a significant negative while per capita GDP has a
significant positive impact on housing price. Finally, increase in construction cost leads to increase
in housing price.
In the rent model, once endogeneity is taken into account, only immigrant variable is found to have
a significant positive effect on housing rent.
Thus overall results show that immigration significantly increases housing price as well as housing
rent.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Ehsan Latif, Associate Professor, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC, Canada. Email: elatif@tru.ca