1 Stability and Change in Visible Minority Responses in Canada: A
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Stability and change in visible minority responses in Canada: A study using linked 2006-2011 census data Carolyn A. Liebler, [email protected] University of Minnesota Feng Hou Statistics Canada Submission to the 2018 meetings of the Population Association of America 1 Canada’s visible minorities are asked to identify themselves in censuses and related data collection efforts so that social inequalities can be documented and reduced. Reporting something as complicated as an identity in a closed-ended survey question can be a challenge, beyond usual survey response consistency issues. An individual’s response to the visible minority question can change over time, just as responses to similar questions change in other contexts. In this research, we address three research questions. First, do Canadians change their answers to the visible minority question? If so, how does this vary across response group? Second, does response change have a strong impact on statistics about visible minority groups? Or do the measures give similar results whether or not response change is taken into account? Third, why do some people change their response to the visible minority question while others keep the same response in the two censuses? To address these questions, we use linked data from the 2006 Canadian census and the 2011 National Household Survey (NHS; the replacement of the mandatory census) to understand stability and change in responses to the visible minority question. We begin by exploring the level of response change in each of 24 response groups over the 5-year period. We show the extent to which Canadians are consistent in their response to the visible minority question, as well as showing variation in response change and variation in which groups they name instead. In this section of the paper, our work parallels and expands on recent research on race, ethnic, and aboriginal response change. We parallel prior work in the US (Liebler et al. 2017) by using inclusive data to study all of Canada’s visible minorities, thus establishing a baseline level of response change in each group across the five years. This is new information that brings Canada’s case into conversation with findings from other parts of the world. In the second part of the paper, we ask whether this response change has been causing a misunderstanding of the occupational and earnings success of each visible minority group. The more response change in a group, the less valid are comparisons of cross-sectional data. We use the longitudinal (linked) data to show the extent to which response change affects measured change in unemployment and market income across the five years. These results give important insight into how visible minority response change affects policy-relevant statistics. Because we can show change over time in individuals’ unemployment and earning experiences, our statistics are particularly useful for understanding effects and impacts of related policies. In the third section of our paper, we use multivariate models on separate visible minority groups to test three hypotheses about which individuals will change visible minority responses across the 5 years. The first of our hypotheses, briefly, is that individuals with mixed heritage will be more likely to change responses. Our second is that people with higher education and age have different knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of race/visible minority status that encourages response stability. And our third hypothesis is that a person whose socioeconomic standing rises will be more likely to report White, and a person whose socioeconomic standing decreases will be more likely to report a visible minority. This aspect of the paper gives insight into some of the reasons that people change their response to the visible minority question in Canada. Background and prior research 2 On the extent of race, ethnic, and aboriginal response change Cross-sectional demographic information has shown for decades that population increases among indigenous people must logically include response change. In recent years, federal statistical agencies have started linking individuals’ responses across census years, thus allowing response change to be studied at a national level. Linked data has allowed studies of both in-flow to and out-flow from Aboriginal response categories in Canada (Caron-Malenfant et al. 2014) and American Indian and Alaska Native in the United States (Liebler, Bhaskar, and Porter 2016). The decades of net gains in the size of these indigenous populations – studied more extensively but less effectively with cross-sectional data – made them an obvious first target of study. Less research has been completed that focuses on response change in other race, ethnic, or visible minority groups because the census to census changes in size do not seem to indicate that the same processes are going on. The newly available linked data has allowed these response groups to be studied anyway in the United States, revealing that an estimated 8% of the US population gave a different race response in 2010 than in 2000 (Liebler et al. 2014 CARRA working paper). This research showed that the a few US response categories were particularly stable: non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, non- Hispanic Asian, and Hispanic (disregarding race). The other response groups experienced substantial change across the decade such that cross-time comparisons should be limited when studying American Indians and Alaska Natives, Pacific Islanders, Some Other Race respondents, those who mark multiple races, and the race responses of people who report Hispanic origin (Liebler et al. 2014, 2017). Our research focuses on all people in Canada who qualify to answer the visible minority question – in other words all non-Aboriginal people. Cross-time changes in the measured population sizes of these groups have been reasonably aligned with demographic projections based on known birth, migration, and mortality statistics. However, the surprisingly high level of response churn – countervailing flows of response change – in the US reveals that linked or longitudinal data are required in order to validate the seemingly rational (but often false) assumption that response change is not a large issue outside of indigenous groups. On effects of response change People with different experiences often have different characteristics. Those who change responses may be having different experiences than those who keep the same response in multiple measures. Thus it seems likely that those who join or leave of a particular group through response change would have different characteristics from those who stay in the group (and from each other, perhaps). Liebler, Bhaskar, and Porter (2016) found that people who joined and left the US American Indian population were different in important ways from those who consistently marked American Indian on the race question. Because (as they also found) joiners and leavers were not significantly different from each other, statistics about the American Indian population in 2000 were fairly similar to those for the 2010 population despite large amounts of population churn. Why would some people change their response? Hypotheses and related prior research 3 Response change and mixed heritage: Some people report multiple heritage in the visible minority question, but others who have mixed heritage may give a single answer to the visible minority question. For someone with mixed heritage who is seen one way by others, sees himself in a different way (perhaps only sometimes), or has links to multiple groups through family members, there can be more than one “correct” answer to the visible minority question. Therefore, we expect that those who acknowledge mixed heritage will be the most likely to change responses. The experience of being an immigrant might also increase the chance of a changed response because the sending country may have different conceptions of “race” or visible minority than does Canada (see Mary Waters’ 2009 book on West Indian immigrants to the United States). People who immigrated as adults may have a stronger dual understanding than those who immigrated as children, while third and higher generation would be less subject to feelings of dual belonging and experiences of dual understandings that pull them in different directions while answering the visible minority question. Understanding of and knowledge about the visible minority concept and categories: We expect that people with more education will have more knowledge, understanding, and acceptance of the concept of visible minority and the categories used on the form. Experience at a college or university is likely to have the strongest effect. We think this knowledge, understanding, and acceptance will increase the chances that the person will stay in the same response category in both years. We also expect that older people will be less likely to change for two reasons. First, they have had a longer lifetime to explore identities and to discern what label fits them best. Second, societies around the world have recently become more nuanced and flexible in interpreting and discussing race and visible minority groups. Older people are more likely to have been socialized to think of race and related categories as simple and straightforward. Socioeconomic status change and response change: In general, Whites have a higher socioeconomic standing in Canada than do people in visible minority groups and so, all else equal, individuals who have