Relative Rankings of Communities in New Brunswick Using Community Well-Being Indicators from the Census

Abstract

We examine a set of well-being measures for New Brunswick communities over a 15- year period (2001-2016). Using Canadian Census data at the subdivision level, we construct a community-level well-being index which includes the domains of income, education, housing, and employment. Our results show that communities in the top quartile of the well-being index tend to be in southern New Brunswick around the population centres of Moncton, Fredericton, and Saint John. In contrast, communities in the bottom quartile are in the eastern and northeastern parts of the province (e.g., the Acadian peninsula). Patterns for each domain are quite similar except for housing, where communities normally in the upper portion of the well-being distribution – around the population centres of Moncton, Fredericton, and Saint Andrews – tend to rank lower on this domain. Additionally, with respect to education, communities in the northern part of the province typically fare worse than those in southern New Brunswick, with some exceptions around Perth- Andover and Edmundston. Finally, we demonstrate that the distribution of these well-being indicators has remained remarkably stable over this 15-year period: communities at the top and at the bottom of the distribution have remained in these respective positions from 2001 to 2016.