Dominion or republic? Migrants to North America from the United Kingdom, 1870-1910

Although average income per head was far lower in Canada than in the US in the late nineteenth century, Canada attracted large numbers of immigrants from the UK. Approximately 30% of male anglophone workers in large Canadian cities in 1901 had been born in the UK. Using individual-level data from the US census of 1900 and the Canadian census of 1901, this paper shows that average annual real earnings by occupation group in Canadian cities were only 10-15 percent lower than in the US. UK immigrants worked in broadly the same kinds of occupations in the two countries, suggesting that the US did not attract only the highly skilled immigrants. Minor differences in tastes, attitudes and information are sufficient to explain why many UK immigrants chose to live in Canada