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Literacy Skills of the Future Canadian Working-Age Population: Assessing the Skill Gap Between the Foreign- and Canadian-Born

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Abstract

This paper presents the results of literacy proficiency projections using a microsimulation model that simultaneously projects future demographic, ethnocultural, and socioeconomic characteristics of the Canadian population. Factors linked with literacy skills of the working-age population are analyzed for both native- and foreign-born Canadians. The projection results show that literacy skills are likely to slightly decline between 2011 and 2061, as the positive effects of increasing education are canceled out by the important skill gap between native- and foreign-born Canadians. Results of the simulation suggest that plausible changes to immigrant selection policies could prevent against the associated literacy skill decline among the Canadian working-age population.

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Notes

  1. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Statistics Canada developed the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) through which the Survey of Adults Skills is conducted. In this survey, literacy proficiency is measured along a continuous scale ranging from 0 to 500, where a higher score indicates greater proficiency. The literacy-proficiency projections presented in this paper are based on PIAAC Survey data. Thus, the definition of literacy skills corresponds to the definition and conceptual framework undergirding this survey. For more information, see OECD (2017) and Statistics Canada (2017b).

  2. Language skills refer to mother tongue and language most often spoken at home.

  3. Canada Pension Plan (CPP). Retirement age in Canada is 65 years old for both men and women.

  4. Are also excluded from the PIAAC survey sample—thus from the analyses—the population residing in institutions, on Aboriginal reserves, and on military bases.

  5. A simple logarithmic transformation is made on the dependent variable (literacy score) to obtain regression coefficients that can be interpreted as showing the percentage effect of a unit change on the average score. The logarithmic transformation also ensures that the linear regression model will not lead to illogical predicted scores (below 0) during the simulation.

  6. We use the standard threshold used by Statistics Canada to distinguish rural and urban areas. An urban area corresponds to an area with a population of at least 1000 and a density of 400 or more people per square kilometer.

  7. The mother’s education level is also a measure of social and cultural capital which directly and indirectly impacts on the children skill development and socioeconomic status. See Augustine and Negraia (2018).

  8. Intensity of reading books at home and of writing letters, memos, or emails at work were used. Life-wide learning is defined as occurring “in different context such as in the home, school, work, community, and other.” (Desjardins 2003b: 211)

  9. The country of birth and country of highest diploma have similar categories. The richest countries of the world are grouped together and correspond to Western European countries, North American countries as well as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea.

  10. This microsimulation model is built along a framework developed for the study of super-diversity in many countries including Canada, the USA, and 28 countries of the European Union (Bélanger et al. 2018a).

  11. Super-diversity is a concept coined by Vertovec (2007) and refers to this emerging demographic regime of increasing ethnocultural diversity.

  12. See Bélanger et al. (2018b) for more technical documentation of the microsimulation.

  13. LSD-C’s point of departure is 2011 and its starting population is based on the 2011 National Household Survey public-use microdata file (NHS-PUMF) corrected for net undercoverage by age, sex, and province of residence.

  14. Characteristics such as age, province of residence, education level, labor force participation status, and length of stay in Canada

  15. Canada’s official immigration plans for 2017–2018 targets 300,000 new permanent residents per year, which represents a historic high compared to prior years (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada Departmental Plan 2017–2018 retrieved at http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/dp/2017-2018/dp.asp on March 9, 2017). In view of the total Canadian population estimates of January 1, 2017 at 36.5 million, this target corresponds to an immigration rate of 0.82%, which is higher than the baseline scenario (BASE) rate. Among the G7 countries, Canada has the highest immigration rate; in fact, most of these countries have an immigration rate below 0.50%.

  16. In LSD-C, education coefficients not only vary by generation status but also by sex, region of residence, visible minority status, mother tongue, and cohorts (Bélanger et al. 2018b).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre Urbanisation Culture Société, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), 385, Sherbrooke E., Montreal, H2X 1E3, Canada

    Samuel Vézina & Alain Bélanger

  2. JRC-IIASA Centre of Expertise on Population and Migration, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, Laxenburg, 2361, Austria

    Alain Bélanger, Patrick Sabourin & Guillaume Marois

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  1. Samuel Vézina
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  2. Alain Bélanger
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  3. Patrick Sabourin
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  4. Guillaume Marois
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Correspondence to Samuel Vézina.

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Vézina, S., Bélanger, A., Sabourin, P. et al. Literacy Skills of the Future Canadian Working-Age Population: Assessing the Skill Gap Between the Foreign- and Canadian-Born. Can. Stud. Popul. 46, 5–25 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42650-019-00002-x

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