While much literature has examined immigrants’ health in Canada, less attention has focused specifically on the life stress, an important yet understudied post-migration challenge which may lead to poor coping strategies and negative health consequences. For this study, the pooled 2009–2014 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) was analyzed, using multilevel logistic regression to examine the compositional effects (at an individual level) and areal effects (at a CMA/CA level) on reported high life stress. Separate models have been run for immigrants and non-immigrants for comparative purposes. The results reveal different ways in which select individual socioeconomic and lifestyle factors affect life stress. A statistically significant yet small areal effect at the CMA/CA level on life stress was identified for both immigrants and non-immigrants. When comparing immigrants to non-immigrants, factors such as smoking, length of residency in Canada, and mental health status were found to be particularly informative for predicting high life stress among immigrants. A Healthy Immigrant Effect (HIE) is partially evident, as immigrants with a longer stay in Canada are more likely to be highly stressed than recent arrivals. The areal effect on variances in high life stress is minimal, suggesting the importance of focusing on individual-level effects as stress predictors. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

CCHS Immigrant Health Multilevel regression Canada Life stress

lifestyle social capital Life Style Alcohol Drinking drinking behavior demography exercise mental health human Health Behavior epidemiology middle aged Overweight statistics and numerical data Stress, Psychological mental stress obesity health status Aged Health Surveys ethnology Residence Characteristics Young Adult Humans migrant psychology smoking Adolescent male Canada Emigrants and Immigrants female Socioeconomic Factors socioeconomics adult age sex factor Sex Factors Age Factors spatial analysis health survey