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Immigrant status and commute distance: an exploratory study based on the greater Golden Horseshoe

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Abstract

With 8.76 million residents in 2011, the population of Southern Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH) has grown dramatically over the past decades, driven by net domestic in-migration and immigration. Corresponding to its growth in population, commuting distances and times within the region have grown as well. Yet, despite the number of immigrants that the region attracts on a yearly basis, there is comparatively little information on commute distances. Consequently, this paper examines commuting distance amongst immigrants in the GGH. Specifically, it evaluates commute distance by immigrant status (immigrants and native born), along with how commute distance differs by arrival cohort and ethnic and racial population groups. Results indicate that commute distance increases with increasing duration of residence, with differences by race and ethnicity.

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Notes

  1. Strictly speaking, a somewhat smaller percentage of recent immigrants aged 25–54 engaged in the labour force as compared to native-born Canadians (63.5 %, compared with 82.9 %, respectively). http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/121214/dq121214b-eng.htm.

  2. Toronto’s commuter shed is defined as all census subdivisions (CSDs) surrounding the city where a minimum of 10 % of the working population commutes into any of the eight employment-rich CSDs of the GGH (see Fig. 1).

  3. We do not attempt to maximize the explanatory power of the model (i.e., as expressed through the R-squared value), and are instead interested in the statistically significant relationships identified in the model. Geographically Weighted Regression techniques (GWR) may provide an alternate estimation method that improves the overall fit of the model.

  4. See Axisa et al. (2012) for an in-depth description and definitions of the variables.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the editor (Prof. Mark Horner), the anonymous reviewers for providing insightful comments to improve our paper. The research was supported financially by a Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (410-2009-1402).

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  1. School of Geography & Earth Sciences, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4K1, Canada

    K. Bruce Newbold, Darren M. Scott & Charles Burke

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  1. K. Bruce Newbold
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Correspondence to K. Bruce Newbold.

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Bruce Newbold, K., Scott, D.M. & Burke, C. Immigrant status and commute distance: an exploratory study based on the greater Golden Horseshoe. Transportation 44, 181–198 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-015-9633-y

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