Immigrant families are growing their wealth at around the same rate as Canadian families, but they are much more reliant on real estate than financial assets to power that growth, according to new research from Statistics Canada.

StatsCan’s study found that household wealth increased similarly for both immigrant families and Canadian-born families between 1999 and 2016.

The average wealth of immigrant families (defined as households whose major income earner is aged 45 to 64 and arrived in Canada at least 20 years earlier) increased by $435,000 over the period, rising from $625,000 to $1.06 million.

For Canadian-born families, average wealth grew by $460,000 over the same period, growing from $519,000 to $979,000.

Yet, the composition of this growth is notably different for the two groups. For immigrant families, housing equity contributed 69% of the growth in average wealth, whereas it accounted for just 39% of the growth for Canadian-born families.

The growth in wealth for Canadian-born families is much more reliant on rising pension assets. For this group, 33% of their wealth growth came from increases in the value of registered pension plan (RPP) assets, compared with just 17% for immigrant families.

“While the increases in home prices observed since the late 1990s drove much of the growth in housing equity, the lower rates of return on financial assets after 1999 were a key factor underlying the growth in the net present value of RPP assets,” StatsCan said.

This greater reliance on real estate is reflected in the fact that immigrant families also had higher debt-to-income ratios than Canadian-born families, the study notes.

It reports that immigrant families had a debt-to-income ratio of 2.17 in 2016, compared with 1.32 for Canadian-born families.

“Most of the difference was due to the larger mortgages carried by immigrant families,” StatsCan said.

Notwithstanding these fundamental differences, the study also found that immigrant families and Canadian-born families appear to manage their finances in similar ways.

“Specifically, the study finds no evidence that immigrant families use payday loans, withdraw money from registered retirement savings plans or pay off only part of their monthly credit card balances to a greater extent than Canadian-born families of similar age do,” it said.