5. Conclusions
This analysis paints a complex picture of the comparison between immigrant and non-immigrant children. It is clear that the specific family context for the child is critical in all domains. Children of lone parents are more likely to report health problems, to have access to fewer informal social supports and make greater use of community and social services professionals, health professionals and religious and spiritual leaders. While these findings are no doubt true of all lone -parent families, it is important to recognize the specific conditions faced by immigrant lone-parent families, especially because of the compounding effects of lone parenthood combined with recent immigration status.
The immigrant, ethnic and region of origin effects are more noticeable in the models of informal and formal support, and especially the formal support models, than in the models which examine health status. There are consistent and noticeable effects associated with French as the child's ethnic or cultural identification and formal support. If we assume this effect mainly reflects children and families living in Québec and a significantly different service environment from the rest of Canada, this suggests the need for a more detailed and in-depth analysis that goes beyond what can be done using the NLSCY data. More generally, however, these results indicate that the ethnocultural community plays a significant role in the development of and access to both formal and informal support networks. The fact that such networks are significantly more developed among the more established ethnocultural groups also indicates a need to focus attention on the concerns of recently arrived immigrant groups.
There are also consistent and noticeable effects associated with Asia as the PMK's region of origin and Chinese and South Asian as the child's ethnic identification. These variables increase the likelihood of indicating no informal support or formal support. We might be capturing the changing patterns of immigration to Canada and the fact that greater proportions of immigrants are now arriving in Canada from east and south Asia. This finding also supports the need for more detailed and in-depth analysis.
Geographically, there are important differences between the largest urban areas and the rest of Canada. Children and their families who live in the largest metropolitan areas have less access to informal supports and are also less likely to use formal services than children and their families with similar characteristics in other urban and rural areas. It should be remembered, however, that many of the children who have higher utilization rates (especially lone parents and immigrants) also tend to concentrate in the largest metropolitan areas. The critical contrast between areas of established immigrants and areas of new immigrants can also be observed in this study. Finally, there is fairly consistent evidence to support the proposition that the relations among health status, informal support and formal support play themselves out most obviously in those parts of our largest metropolitan areas which are socially and economically disadvantaged in other ways.
The analysis as a whole makes a strong case for attempts to augment the NLSCY in the largest metropolitan areas. Our analysis shows that more of the problems associated with health, informal and formal support among immigrant children and their families are likely to focus on the largest metropolitan areas where immigrant children and families are concentrated. Without any changes, future researchers will continue to have only 367, or less than two percent of the observations out of approximately 22,831 observations in Cycle 1 of the NLSCY, which can unequivocally be classified as immigrant children of immigrant parents. In future cycles of the NLSCY, a richer segment of the database to focus on such issues linked to immigrant children should be of the highest priority.
Now that the children's health variables are available, it would be a worthwhile exercise to go back and replicate the analyses carried out in this study. We would, however, be surprised to find major differences in health status between immigrant and non-immigrant children all other things being equal. It would also be useful to control for household socio-economic status. In another set of experimental models not presented in this report, a derived measure of household socioeconomic status was inserted into logistic regression models similar to those presented in this report. While the individual parameter estimates changed marginally, the overall structure of the models remained virtually unchanged with respect to the role of the critical family, immigration, ethnic and community variables, although the role of socio-economic status itself is statistically significant. In other words, those variables that are statistically significant in the models discussed in this report are the same variables that are statistically significant in the experimental models that we chose not to include. Using both improved measures of health status and/or household socio-economic status, it might also be interesting to test various interaction effects, especially with variables like lone parenthood, whether the PMK speaks neither official language, whether the child is an immigrant or non-immigrant, and between health status and socio-economic status.
Finally, from a policy perspective, this report raises two critical issues. First there is strong evidence that lack of informal support and use of formal supports are linked to language and other ethnic and cultural issues for immigrant children and their families, especially in the earliest years after immigration. Barriers need to be identified and broken down, especially in our largest cities where immigrants and new Canadians concentrate. While we are unable to say anything about the process of racialization of new immigrants using the data available, the fact that the majority of immigrants are now visible minorities should not be ignored in the attempt to understand their experiences on arrival in Canada. Secondly, children in lone-parent families lack informal supports and concomitantly use formal supports more than children in two-parent families. We should not be surprised to find that poverty is the most significant factor influencing the experiences of lone-parent families, but additional work also needs to be done to understand the cultural factors that influence support networks and the resources available to lone parents. Developing programs to foster the former and reduce the latter represents a public policy challenge of immense proportions.
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