Rural Newfoundland and Labrador Profile:

A Ten-year Census Analysis (1991-2001)

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Executive Summary

Introduction

The Government of Canada's Rural Secretariat initiated this report to advance its goal of improving government and citizen understanding of rural conditions in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. This report benchmarks major socio-economic structures and trends regarding rural areas. The overall objective is to help improve policy with respect to the economic and social conditions found in rural Newfoundland and Labrador.

Research Methods

Two major classification systems form the core analysis in this report. First, the Metropolitan Influenced Zones (MIZ) system, developed by McNiven et al. (2000), is utilized to make distinctions within rural and small town Newfoundland and Labrador. The four MIZ categories are Strong, Moderate, Weak, and No MIZ, with each reflecting progressively greater rurality. Second, a basic comparison between urban centres and rural/small town zones is also presented to capture overall differences between the two sectors of the province. In total, 20 indicators from Statistics Canada's 2001, 1996 and 1991 Censuses of Population have been calculated and analyzed for each of four degrees of rurality, for rural and small town Newfoundland and Labrador as a whole, and for its urban centres.

Major Findings

Population Indicators

In 2001, rural and small town residents comprised 53.5% of the total Newfoundland and Labrador population, down from 55.4% in 1991. Between 1991 and 1996, virtually all of the province's population contraction (of 2.9%) was due to losses in rural and small town zones (of 5.1%). Though urban population decline contributed to the provincial loss between 1996 and 2001, rural population losses greatly exceeded that of urban centres during the latter half of the decade. The 1996 to 2001 population contraction was essentially uniform across rural and small town zones, with each MIZ zone undergoing losses of 10.0% or 11.0 %.

Proportionally speaking, Newfoundland and Labrador had a significantly larger rural population than Canada in 2001 (53.5% compared to 20.6%), with most of the difference attributable to the much larger proportional populations of Moderate and Weak MIZ zones in Newfoundland and Labrador than in Canada (of a combined 45.3% compared to 14.2%). Population losses between 1996 and 2001 in rural Newfoundland and Labrador were much greater than that of rural Canada (10.6 compared to 0.4%).

Compared to the urban population, Newfoundland and Labrador's rural population is slightly less youthful, with smaller proportions of children, youth and young adults and larger proportions of adults and seniors. The average age of the provincial population increased between 1991 and 2001, with rural zones slightly more likely than urban areas to have declining proportions of children, youth, and young adults and increasing proportions of adults and seniors.

Rural and small town zones were home to a greater proportion of Aboriginal individuals than were the province's urban centres (comprising 5.6% of the rural versus 1.5% of the urban population in 2001). Weak MIZ zones had the largest absolute number of Aboriginal individuals in 2001, while No MIZ zones had the largest proportional share of individuals self-identifying as Aboriginal in this census year.

Economic, Education, Social and Health Care Indicators

Residents of rural Newfoundland and Labrador were by far the most disadvantaged with respect to economic conditions, levels of educational attainment and access to health care. Within rural and small town Newfoundland and Labrador, Strong and Weak MIZ zones often emerged as the most advantaged of the rural zones, while Moderate and No MIZ zones often displayed the least favorable characteristics in the province.

The use of three consecutive census years permits a review of changes over the decade of the 1990s in rural Newfoundland and Labrador. Most apparent in this over-time analysis is the continuation of the relative disadvantage of rural zones, when compared to urban Newfoundland and Labrador. Within rural zones of the province, however, a more mixed pattern of over-time change is observed, at least with respect to economic conditions. While No MIZ zones were once among the most advantaged of rural zones, by 2001 the economic conditions had deteriorated such that they ranked among the least advantaged. Strong MIZ zones, in contrast, exhibited much greater over time improvement and, as a result, replaced No MIZ as the most prosperous of zones as of 2001. At the same time, most zones exhibited a degree of improvement in the latter half of the 1990s, though seldom were conditions in 2001 substantially better than they were in 1991.

Examples of this pattern include the following:

Economic Indicators

• Labour force participation rates were much higher in urban than in rural zones of the province (62.9% compared to 53.1% in 2001, respectively). Though rates increased throughout the province between 1996 and 2001, they remained lower in 2001 than in 1991.


• Rural unemployment rates exceeded urban unemployment rates in each census year. No MIZ zones not only had the highest unemployment rate in the province (41.3% in 2001), they were the only zones in the province to exhibit an increase in unemployment rates between 1991 and 2001.


• Rural and small town populations dominated employment in primary industries, while urbanites were much more likely to be working in the service industries in each census year.


• Urban median incomes exceeded rural median incomes in each census year, though Moderate and No MIZ were the only zones in the province with a higher median income in 2001 than in 1996.


• A greater proportion of rural than urban residents were considered low‑income in 2001 (20.5% compared to 17.2%), though Strong MIZ zones had roughly the same proportion of low-income individuals as did urban centres (17.1%).


• A greater proportion of rural than urban incomes were derived from social transfer income in 2001 (29.6% compared to 14.2%), and within rural Newfoundland and Labrador, Moderate and No MIZ residents were the most likely to derive their income from this source (32.6% and 32.0%, respectively).

Education Indicators

• The lowest level of educational attainment is observed in Moderate and No MIZ zones where, respectively, 52.8% and 53.3% of the population of at least 20 years of age had not completed high school as recently as 2001.


• All rural zones had fewer education providers per 1,000 residents than did urban centres regardless of census year. Moderate MIZ zones had the fewest education providers in the province in 2001 (14.7 per 1,000 residents).

Social Indicators

• Housing values in Strong MIZ zones were 38% higher than housing values in No MIZ zones. However, No MIZ zones were only slightly less likely than Strong MIZ zones to have households that spent 30% or more on shelter costs in 2001 (11.1% compared to 13.4%).

Health Care Indicators

• In 1996, the urban/rural gap in the number of health care providers was 18.5 providers per 1,000 residents. By 2001, this gap had increased to 21.2 providers per 1,000 residents.
• In No MIZ zones resided the lowest number of health care providers in the province (11.9 per 1,000 in 2001), with just 0.8 professional health care providers (e.g., physicians) per 1,000 residents.

A notable exception to these patterns was found for the prevalence of lone‑parent families. Lone-parent families were more common in urban than in rural zones of the province (16.8% compared to 13.4% in 2001) and the least likely to be found in No MIZ zones (10.4%).

Residents of rural and small town Newfoundland and Labrador are clearly not equivalent to their urban counterparts with respect to economic prosperity, educational attainment, housing, and access to health care. The differences that exist within rural and small town Newfoundland and Labrador are, however, equally apparent. Though the disadvantaged position of No MIZ zones suggests that lack of urban integration is a factor here, it is unclear why the more integrated Moderate MIZ zones often displayed the most disadvantaged conditions in the province. Nonetheless, decision makers should recognize the range of conditions across the four MIZ zones of the province when drafting policy and implementing programs.

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You can also receive a Word document or get additional information by contacting:

Manager of Research and Analysis
Rural Research and Analysis Unit
Rural Secretariat, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Tower 7, 6th Floor
1341 Baseline Road
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0C5
Tel: 888 781-2222
E-mail: rs@agr.gc.ca

Catalogue No.: A114-13/10-2001E-HTML
ISBN: 0-662-40316-9
©Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, 2005

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