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This Economic Insights article documents differences in labour market participation observed between immigrant wives and Canadian-born wives over the 2006-to-2014 period. It also assesses the degree to which the lower participation of immigrant wives, as compared with their Canadian-born counterparts, can be accounted for by differences in socioeconomic characteristics, such as family size, weekly wages of husbands, and labour force participation in the source country. The study uses the Labour Force Survey and World Bank indicators on source-country characteristics to examine these issues. Attention is restricted to Canadian-born women and landed immigrant women aged 25 to 54 who are married (or living in common-law relationships) with husbands aged 25 to 54 who are employed as paid workers. For simplicity, the terms ‘husbands’ and ‘wives’ are used to refer to men and women who are married or in common-law relationships.