OTTAWA, April 5, 2017 /CNW/ - New Brunswick secures a respectable 10th place finish and receives a "B" grade on the first How Canada Performs: Society report card that compares the social performance of Canada, its provinces, and 15 peer countries.
"New Brunswick is the top-ranked province on our latest society report card. The province has low income inequality, low crime rates, and ranks highly on life satisfaction," said Craig Alexander, Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist, The Conference Board of Canada. "That said, there are some key areas for improvement highlighted in this report card including concerns around poverty and jobless youth."
HIGHLIGHTS
Canadians report relatively high levels of life satisfaction, with most provinces scoring an "A". New Brunswick gets an "A+" on this measure and ranks 4th overall among the provinces, behind Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island but ahead of the best-performing peer country, Switzerland.
New Brunswick receives an "A" grade on income inequality, ranking 8th among all 26 comparator jurisdictions and ahead of all the other provinces. Like most of the provinces, New Brunswick is also an "A" performer on intergenerational income mobility, which is a measure of the extent to which differences in income are transmitted from one generation to the next.
It receives a "B" grade on gender wage gap, with an approximate difference of 14 per cent in earnings between men and women (based on median weekly earnings), and ranks 9th overall and third among the provinces, behind P.E.I. and Manitoba. On racial wage gap, it ranks 4th among the provinces, behind the other Atlantic provinces, with university-educated Canadian-born members of a visible minority earning, on average, 87.1 cents for every dollar earned by their Caucasian peers. New Brunswick also ranks 4th among the provinces on the immigrant wage gap. The hourly wages of university-educated landed immigrants living in the province are on average 15 per cent lower than those of Canadian-born citizens. On income of people with disabilities, New Brunswick ranks 6th among the provinces as its average income is 71.9 per cent that of people without disabilities.
New Brunswick scores "A" grades on the two crime indicators: homicides and burglaries. With a three-year average of 409 burglaries per 100,000 population, New Brunswick has a lower burglary rate than the national average of 438 and comes in seventh place overall among the 26 comparator jurisdictions on this measure. On homicides, New Brunswick also does better than the national average of 1.5 deaths per 100,000 population with a rate of 1.2 deaths, ranking 6th among the provinces.
New Brunswick gets a "B" on voter turnout. With 74 per cent of the population voting in the last federal election, the province has the second higher voter turnout rate in Canada, after Prince Edward Island.
While New Brunswick does well on a number of measures on the Society report card, there are some key areas of concern. For one, the poverty rate in the province is higher than the national average and higher than that of most peer countries - New Brunswick ranks 19th among the 26 comparator jurisdictions on this measure. On jobless youth, the province ranks 17th overall with 16.9 per cent of people between the ages of 20 and 24 neither attending school nor working.
New Brunswick's three-year average suicide rate is the highest among the provinces, at 13.8 deaths per 100,000 population – over two times the rate of the top-ranked province, Prince Edward Island. New Brunswick ranks fourth among the provinces and 14th among the comparator regions on perceived social network support, with just under 95 per cent of people responding that they have someone they can count on for help in times of need.
Canada earns a "B" grade overall and ranks 10th among the 16 peer countries on the Society report card. The country ranks high on life satisfaction but does poorly relative to top-ranked peers on poverty, income inequality, gender wage gap, and voter turnout.
How Canada Performs is an ongoing research program at The Conference Board of Canada to help leaders identify relative strengths and weaknesses in Canada's socio-economic performance. Six performance domains are assessed: Economy, Education and Skills, Innovation, Environment, Health, and Society.
Explore the results of the How Canada Performs: Society report card in-depth during a live webinar on April 19, 2017 at 02:00 PM EDT.
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SOURCE Conference Board of Canada
Yvonne Squires, Media Relations, The Conference Board of Canada, Tel.: 613- 526-3090 ext. 221, E-mail: [email protected]; or Juline Ranger, Director of Communications, The Conference Board of Canada, Tel.: 613- 526-3090 ext. 431, E-mail: [email protected]
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