Recent immigrant families in Canada had net debt of $6,100 on average at the bottom of the wealth distribution, while comparable Canadian-born families held $1,700 in net worth, according to a new study released July 22, 2026, by Statistics Canada and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. The research examines how wealth disparities between immigrant and Canadian-born families vary across income levels, revealing that gaps shrink dramatically at the top of the distribution but remain large in the middle tiers. Using pooled data from 2016, 2019, and 2023, the study divided families into quartiles based on their position within their own wealth distribution, comparing recent immigrants (0 to 9 years in Canada) and established immigrants (10 or more years) against Canadian-born families at similar life stages.
The wealth gap between recent immigrant and Canadian-born families shifted dramatically across the distribution. In the second quartile, Canadian-born families held 2.5 times more wealth than recent immigrants, a gap of $71,400. In the third quartile, Canadian-born families had nearly twice as much wealth, with a difference of $183,500. But at the top of the distribution, the relative gap narrowed sharply: recent immigrant families in the fourth quartile held $1,271,600 compared to $1,515,600 for Canadian-born families, just 16% less. The absolute dollar difference at the top was $244,000, though this figure jumped to $356,300 after adjusting for demographic characteristics like urban residence and education levels. Established immigrant families showed the opposite pattern, holding $9,800 more wealth than Canadian-born families in the first quartile and $77,500 more in the second quartile—advantages that disappeared entirely in the fourth quartile, where both groups had similar total wealth near $2.9 million.
The composition of wealth explains much of these disparities. Recent immigrant families had substantially less home equity than their Canadian-born counterparts in the middle tiers: $6,600 versus $35,800 in the second quartile, and $74,000 versus $155,000 in the third quartile. They also lagged in employer-sponsored pension assets and Registered Retirement Savings Plans, with Canadian-born families holding four times more pension wealth in the second quartile ($28,600 versus $7,000) and four times more in the third quartile ($85,900 versus $21,300). Lower homeownership rates among recent immigrants accounted for 80% of the home equity gap in the second quartile and 65% in the third quartile. Established immigrant families, by contrast, held more home equity than Canadian-born families across all quartiles—$246,400 versus $141,300 in the second quartile and $542,000 versus $326,700 in the third—but had far less in pension assets, with a gap of $265,400 in the fourth quartile.
The authors conclude that median wealth comparisons miss critical variations at the distribution's extremes. "Comparisons of differences in median wealth—which spotlight the middle of the distribution—miss differences at the lower and upper ends," the report states. The persistent gap in retirement savings among both recent and established immigrants points to systemic differences in access to employer-sponsored pensions, even as home equity provides a wealth buffer for long-term residents. Geographic concentration in census metropolitan areas artificially inflates home equity values for immigrants, particularly established families; place of residence accounted for 81% of their home equity advantage over Canadian-born families in the fourth quartile and 53% in the third quartile. For established immigrants, greater real estate wealth compensates for less diversified portfolios, but this leaves them more exposed to housing market volatility than Canadian-born families with balanced pension and property holdings.
The findings show that immigrant economic integration doesn't follow a single path but varies sharply by wealth level and time in Canada. Recent immigrants at the top of their distribution nearly match Canadian-born wealth levels within a decade, while those in the middle face persistent disadvantages driven by lower homeownership and pension access. Established immigrants build wealth primarily through real estate, creating advantages at lower wealth levels but leaving them with less diversified assets at the top. The study demonstrates that understanding immigrant financial outcomes requires looking beyond midpoint comparisons to capture the full complexity of wealth accumulation across the distribution.