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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Race, language, or length of residency?
— Explaining unequal uptake of government pensions in Canada | | Author(s) | Josh Curtis, Weizhen Dong, Naomi Lightman, Matthew Parbst |
| Journal title | Journal of Aging and Social Policy, vol 29, no 4, July-September 2017 |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis, July-September 2017 |
| Pages | pp 332-351 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Old persons pensions ; Policy ; Usage [services] ; Ethnic groups ; Immigrants ; Living patterns ; Quantitative studies ; Canada. |
| Annotation | Canada's old age security (OAS), a flat-benefit public pension, is internationally lauded as an accessible and effective safety net for older people. This paper explores discrepancies in OAS uptake, using Canadian Census data from 1996 to 2011. The findings demonstrate disparities in OAS uptake based on immigration status, language proficiency and visible minority status, disputing claims of "universal" OAS provision. Multivariate analyses confirm a strong "immigrant effect", with being in Canada for 20 years or less leading to lower rates of OAS uptake. The analyses also confirm that those not proficient in Canada's official languages are less likely to receive OAS benefits. However, the influence of minority status on grounds of race is found to be spurious. After controlling for immigration status and official language proficiency, many racial minority senior groups have higher odds of receiving OAS than White Canadians. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the trade-offs involved in considering a potential removal of OAS eligibility barriers for immigrants in Canada. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-180112214 A |
| Classmark | JJD: QAD: QLD: TK: TJ: K7: 3DQ: 7S |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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