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Introduction
Population New Brunswick (PopNB) is a research stream in the Pathways to Professions experiential learning program at the New Brunswick Institute for Research, Data and Training (NB-IRDT), comprised of four undergraduate students: our communications coordinator Kelsi Evans, and our data analysts Lee Whelan, Griffin Higgins, and Samuel McNally. PopNB aims to characterize New Brunswick’s demographics by analyzing open-source data. With these analyses, we hope to inform data-driven policy for government and community stakeholders. PopNB operated this summer with the help of Dr. Ted McDonald, the Director of NB-IRDT and the principal investigator for the project, and Madeleine Gorman-Asal, PopNB’s student mentor. We explored the implications of New Brunswick’s aging population by first conducting a literature review to gain a solid understanding of the current scope of NB’s aging problem before beginning our analysis of Statistics Canada data. By identifying the groups most vulnerable to the negative consequences of our aging population, we can help decision-makers target government resources that best benefit our growth as a province.
Here is a snapshot of what we found:
Healthcare costs are expected to climb rapidly as people age, and the prevalence of chronic conditions such as diabetes and arthritis will increase. Considering the New Brunswick Health Council’s findings that individuals with three or more chronic conditions generate four times more healthcare costs than individuals with none, alternative healthcare services will likely be needed to support future treatment. Young interprovincial and international migrants can add to our tax base to help pay for rising healthcare costs in addition to slowing down the aging of our population and filling labour shortages. However, NB is seeing an out-migration of young adults and recently arrived international migrants. The number of international migrants coming to NB has been increasing, but many immigrants are leaving for Ontario. For example, we found that 710 immigrants left for Ontario within two years of being admitted to NB in 2016.
PopNB also identified that the number of individuals in the labour force below 44 years of age is decreasing, and the number above age 44 is increasing. This is resulting in mass amounts of retirees exiting NB’s labour market. According to the Government of New Brunswick’s Population Growth Strategy, there will be approximately 120,000 job openings in NB between 2018 to 2027. Retaining post-secondary graduates, in addition to our recently arrived immigrants, is necessary to fill these job vacancies. The labour outcomes of graduates can be an indicator of how incentivized graduates are to stay in the province. We also found that although significantly more women enroll in and graduate from post-secondary institutions in NB, men earn a median income of $12,200 more than women five years after graduation. More research is needed to understand what impact this could have on retention and help decision-makers directly remove the gender wage gap.
The completion of our analysis did not come without obstacles, as working with open-source data has limitations. A frequent problem we encountered was a lack of data from recent years. Additionally, working with multiple large census data sets proved challenging as there were often inconsistencies in variables from year to year. However, PopNB overcame these challenges and translated our results into clear deliverables for stakeholders, creating a magazine and three briefing notes. Our magazine has a comprehensive summary of our findings, and our briefing notes connect our findings to relevant financial and economic implications in the province. In years to come, future PopNB researchers hope to continue updating and modifying these topics to produce meaningful and timely results that inform our government and community stakeholders about our province’s opportunities to grow.
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