The New Brunswick Paradox

More than a paradox, New Brunswick shows all the characteristics of a distinct society and serves up a few lessons on life.

Despite having one of the lowest provincial GDPs and one of the lowest proportions of individuals declaring very high incomes, New Brunswick recorded the highest RHI in Canada.

The paradox is even more evident when you consider the fact that the residents of this province also have a number of the characteristics that normally are associated with a diminishing happiness index. More of them come from large families and, as we saw before, members of large families tend to have lower-than-average RHI values.

The same is true for people who generally find it more difficult to accept life today as it is and those who are concerned about the future. New Brunswick has the greatest proportion of people with these characteristics. A similar trend exists with technological advances: New Brunswick seems to have more trouble than the other provinces in keeping pace.

Then where does this optimism and greater propensity for happiness come from? Probably from the attitude of New Brunswickers, because their province is the place in Canada that agrees the least with the idea that modern society makes it more difficult to achieve happiness. Furthermore, New Brunswick has the greatest number of individuals who think that people in the past were just as happy as people are today and will be tomorrow. This is definitely a positive attitude.

Although they find it more difficult to accept life today as it is, more of them state that they are living the lives that they dreamed of.

Above all, New Brunswickers appear to be more in touch with their feelings and turned in the highest scores for most of the twelve happiness influence factors. In this regard, and perhaps this is where we should focus our attention, New Brunswick is the only province that did not rank spiritual life last among the happiness influence factors. In fact, they gave it a score of 80.50, which is 12 points over the Canadian average.  Another positive attitude.

Will New Brunswick be able to hold its slot when the next RHI is revealed? Is it too early to talk about a trend? While these figures may be indicative of a trend, a number of signs are not very encouraging, including the province's low differential between improvement and deterioration of the state or happiness of people last year (24 versus 26 for Canada) and the fact that there are far fewer New Brunswickers (47% versus 57%) who indicated that they were satisfied with what they had accomplished in their lives up until now.

The story goes on…