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Using data from Statistic Canada's General Social Survey Cycle 21 (GSS 2007), this study explores whether differences exist in the impacts of care-giving among three groups of caregivers providing informal care either in the caregiver's or recipient's home, or in other locations within the community: (i) those providing end-of-life (EOL) care (n = 471); (ii) those providing long-term care (more than 2 years) for someone with a chronic condition or long-term illness (n = 2722); and (iii) those providing short-term care (less than 2 years) for someone with a chronic condition or long-term illness (n = 2381). This study lays out the variation in sociodemographic characteristics across the three caregiver groups while also building on our understanding of the differential impacts of care-giving through an analysis of determinants. All three groups of caregivers shared a number of sociodemographic characteristics, including being female, married, employed and living in a Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). With respect to health, EOL caregivers were found to have significantly higher levels of ‘fair or poor’ self-assessed health than the other two groups. Overall, the findings suggest that EOL caregivers are negatively impacted by the often additional role of care-giving, more so than both short-term and long-term caregivers. EOL caregivers experienced a higher proportion of negative impacts on their social and activity patterns. Furthermore, EOL caregivers incurred greater financial costs than the other two types of informal caregivers. The impacts of EOL care-giving also negatively influence employment for caregivers when compared with the other caregiver groups. Consequently, EOL caregivers, overall, experienced greater negative impacts, including negative health outcomes, than did long-term or short-term caregivers. This provides the evidence for the assertion that EOL care-giving is the most intense type of care-giving, potentially causing the greatest caregiver burden; this is shown through the greater negative impacts experienced by the EOL caregivers when compared with the short-term and long-term caregivers.

This is the second in a series of papers that deal with care‐giving in Canada, as based on data available from the Canadian General Social Survey (2007). Building on the first paper, which reviewed the differences between short‐term, long‐term and end‐of‐life (EOL) caregivers, this paper uniquely examines the caregiver supports employed by EOL caregivers when compared to non‐EOL caregivers (short‐term and long‐term caregivers combined). Both papers employ data from Statistics Canada's General Social Survey (GSS Cycle 21: 2007). The GSS includes three modules, where respondents were asked questions about the unpaid home care assistance that they had provided in the last 12 months to someone at EOL or with either a long‐term health condition or a physical limitation. The objective of this research paper was to investigate the link between the impact of the care‐giving experience and the caregiver supports received, while also examining the differences in these across EOL and non‐EOL caregivers. By way of factor analysis and regression modelling, we examine differences between two types of caregivers: (i) EOL and (ii) non‐EOL caregivers. The study revealed that with respect to socio‐demographic characteristics, health outcomes and caregiver supports, EOL caregivers were consistently worse off. This suggests that although all non‐EOL caregivers are experiencing negative impacts from their care‐giving role, comparatively greater supports are needed for EOL caregivers.

This paper uses data from the 1996 Canadian census to examine and measure the spatial structure and intensity of urban deprivation in Montreal. Urban deprivation emerged as an important theme in urban studies and urban geography during the 1990s. Since the early 1980s, the Montreal urban area, particularly the Island of Montreal, has experienced an increase in urban social problems, brought on largely by economic restructuring, recessions and the out-migration of residents and businesses to suburban communities. Twenty indicators of urban deprivation are drawn from the census and analysed by way of a principal components analysis first to identify the main types of deprivation in the city and then to measure its intensity. In the process, a general deprivation index (GDI) is devised which can be applied to study the spatial aspects of this phenomenon in other Canadian cities. The study identified six main types of deprivation in the city and found that they were most visible on the Island of Montreal, especially in the central and eastern parts. Additionally, it found that urban deprivation in not confined to the inner city, as several of the most severely deprived neighbourhoods are located outside the central city and even in the off-Island suburbs.

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