RECENT
IMMIGRANTS AND UNDERCLASS
POPULATION IN CANADIAN CITIES
SPATIAL
ANALYSIS
Recent Immigrants and Poverty
Index
From
the foregoing, the separate
regression models developed above reveal their individual and distinct
characteristics with recent immigrant population. Poverty variables do
not exist independently but one poverty variable may led to or activate
another. This is evident in the well known geographic saying that ‘all
things are related but near things are more related than distant
things’.
A further spatial statistical analysis
technique adopted is multiple regression, that combined the independent
variables to model their interactive and the collective effect on the
dependent variable. A poverty index is calculated from the coefficients
of low income economic families, persons without income, educational
level and government transfer payments. Though government transfers may
be considered as a result of poverty, however, its occurrence
essentially influences the presence of poverty. The combination of
these independent variables is termed poverty index in this case. These
poverty indices are representative of each entire CT. Recent immigrant
poverty index indicated on the maps is calculated as:
If 100
% = PI
then
RIPi % = RIPi * PI
100
However,
for each CMA, the poverty
index is calculated using the weights deduced from the regression
technique. The poverty index (x) for a census tract is defined as:
x = k1u + k2z
+ k3y + k4v + kc
where u = Low income economic families (%)
z = persons
without income (%)
y = government
transfer payments (%)
v = persons
with education below grade 9(%)
k1, k2, k3 and
k4 are coefficients for u, z, y, and v respectively.
kc is the
constant term.
Thus for the respective cities, the poverty index is
calculated for 1996 and 2001 as:
Montreal
1996
x =
1.73u + 0.05z + 0.55y + 0.13v + 14.54
Montreal 2001
x =
1.77u + 0.12z + 0.57y + 0.11v + 10.71
Vancouver 1996
x =
0.87u + 0.23z + 0.11y + 0.28v + 7.36
Vancouver 2001
x =
1.15u + 0.20z + 0.21y + 0.24v + 6.21
Toronto 1996
x =
1.22u + 0.27z + 0.36y + 0.23v + 7.15
Toronto 2001
x =
1.03u + 0.19z + 0.29y + 0.14v + 6.07
