South Asian grandparents are eight times as likely to live with their grandchildren as grandparents of some other ethnic groups in Canada, including Japanese and Caucasians, according to Statistics Canada data.
The proportion of the population aged 45 and over with a Sikh religion and who were co-residing grandparents was 39% in 2011, compared with 4% among those with no religious affiliation.
Individuals in their mid-forties and older who identified themselves as being affiliated with Traditional Aboriginal Spirituality or as Hindu also had relatively higher proportions of being grandparents in a shared home (20% and 18%, respectively).
In contrast, the lowest proportions of individuals aged 45 and over who were grandparents in shared homes—even lower than those who declared no religion—were those who reported being Christian (3%) and Jewish (less than 2%).
Despite the higher proportion of co-residing grandparents with Sikh, Traditional Aboriginal Spirituality or Hindu religious affiliations, there were differences in the middle-generation composition of these groups.
In 2011, nearly all Sikh and Hindu (99% of each group) grandparents in a shared home lived with a middle generation, primarily a couple (accounting for 88% and 85% of these co-residing grandparents, respectively).
In contrast, 71% of those who declared Traditional Aboriginal Spirituality lived in a multigenerational household, including 15% who lived with a middle-generation couple. The remainder (29%) were in skip-generation households, more than double the national average (12%) and certainly more than those who declared Sikh or Hindu affiliations (about 1% each).
A relatively low proportion of Sikh and Hindu co‑residing grandparents overall had any responsibility for household payments, at 27% and 24% in 2011, respectively, as most of these grandparents lived with a middle-generation couple, situations in which they are less likely be a financial maintainer.
Conversely, among grandparents who affiliated with Traditional Aboriginal Spirituality, 74% had at least some responsibility for maintaining their household, likely reflecting the comparatively higher proportions of these grandparents in skip-generation households or households with a middle-generation lone parent.
In many ways, the results obtained by religious affiliation align with those that were obtained for other ethnocultural and diversity characteristics.
A large majority of Sikh co-residing grandparents, for instance, most often spoke Punjabi at home (92%).
