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TORONTO — About a year after Yi Jiang and her family moved to Ottawa from China, they found themselves sharing a two-bedroom apartment with her parents.

After living together in Shenzhen, it seemed only natural that once the entire family was in Canada, her parents would live with her, her husband and their young son, she said. The couple has since had another child, and last year all six moved to a house in the suburbs.

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“It’s very important for me to live with them … they are the most important people in my life and I am the only child,” said Jiang, a producer for a Mandarin radio show.

Such arrangements are very common in China and many continue the practice after they immigrate, she added.

Such appears to be the case in Canada, where the latest tranche of Statistics Canada data from the 2016 census shows a significant spike in the growth rate of multigenerational households — a 37.5 per cent increase since 2001, surpassing the 21.7 per cent rate of growth in households overall.