Home ownership and spacious homes: Equity under stress in early-twentieth-century Canada

This article attempts to contribute to a burgeoning literature on Canadian housing history. It approaches the nature of housing by linking two measure ments often examined in isolation: ownership and interior space. Using data from the Canadian Families Project's 5 percent random sample of the nomina l census returns for Canada in 1901, this article presents the first nation al analysis comparing housing ownership and housing space in both rural and urban Canada. It attempts to determine, via a series of logistic regressio ns, the relative importance of several social and economic variables on a f amily's chances of owning a home and of living in a crowded or relatively s pacious environment. The article demonstrates that the social and economic influences on the chances of ownership differed in same significant ways fr om the influences on the chances of living in a spacious horne.