Multigenerational living and children’s risk of living in unaffordable housing: differences by ethnicity and parents’ marital status

ABSTRACT

A growing share of Canadian households are living in unaffordable housing (i.e. spending 30% or more of their pre-tax income on housing costs). During this time, the prevalence of multigenerational living has also increased. Ethnic minority families are more likely than White families to live in multigenerational households. These trends raise the questions: (a) is multigenerational living a strategy for families to navigate the housing affordability crisis? (b) do ethnic minority children benefit more from multigenerational living than their White peers? Using confidential data from the 2016 Canadian Census, we examine how multigenerational living shapes the housing experiences of children under the age of 16. Multigenerational living is associated with consistent reductions in children’s odds of living in unaffordable housing. Yet, for those in single-parent families, this protective association is largest among White children. For those in dual-parent families, this protective association is largest among Black children. Socioeconomic disadvantage and a greater propensity for three-generation families to reside in metropolitan areas with expensive housing appear to suppress the benefits emerging from multigenerational living.

KEYWORDS:

• Housing affordability
• ethnic inequality
• multigenerational households

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In Canada, 94% of children under age 16 living with grandparents are in three-generational households and 77% of children living with extended families lived in three-generation households.

2 https://www.ontario.ca/page/minimum-age-work; https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment-business/employment-standards-advice/employment-standards/hiring/

3 Statistics Canada only computes STIR for those with net positive household income, and who do not live in band housing or farms. See https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/ref/dict/households-menage028-eng.cfm

4 Following release guidelines from Statistics Canada, we round the numbers to the closest 1000.

5 https://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p3Var.pl?Function=DECI&Id=298844

6 The US Census and ACS data identifies ‘the person living or staying here in whose name the house or apartment is owned, being bought, or rented’. This information can be used to determine whether the child's parents are the host or guest in multigenerational households. The Canadian census does not collect such information. Instead, it asks several household members whether they are contributing towards shelter costs. We cannot identify the hosts/guests.

7 In earlier models, we attempted to include mothers’ proficiency in English/French, but could not include it due to multicollinearity issues.

8 In earlier versions, we estimated race-specific models to ascertain whether the impact of the various covariates differs by ethnicity. They did not. Our current analyses rely on the interaction between family ethnicity and children's living arrangements. The race-specific analyses, reported in Tables A4-6 in the Online Appendix, yield robust estimates.

9 Figure A1 presents the percentage of children in multigenerational households by maternal relationship status.

10 Our results are robust.

11 For clarity, we use the term protective association to refer to the statistically negative association between multigenerational living and the odds of unaffordable housing.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [Grant Number 435-2021-0701]; Western University: [Grant Number R5073A11].