BC Stats recently put out a report filled with fascinating insights on the Sunshine Coast. Did you know, for example, that Sunshine Coasters drink much, much more than average? Each adult on the Sunshine Coast spends an average of $665 a year to buy 94 litres of booze, 60 per cent higher than the provincial average. Beer is the favourite drink (70 per cent), and we buy more wine (20 per cent) and less hard liquor (10 per cent) than most people in the province.
The report is only fascinating, of course, if you enjoy reading tables of statistics, which apparently few of us do: 68.8 per cent of Sunshine Coast Grade 12 students do not write the provincial math exam, according to the report.
I happen to like this kind of thing, and I found the statistics paint an interesting picture of the Sunshine Coast as a generational "two solitudes," a place where senior citizens are doing quite well and young people are doing not so well.
The Sunshine Coast's children seem to start life nicely. Our infant mortality rate is the lowest in B.C., partly because women with risky pregnancies go to Vancouver to deliver.
From there, things go downhill. Our child abuse rate in 2003 was more than twice the provincial average and we have slightly more children in care than average.
Our serious crime rate for 2000-2002 is lower than the provincial average, but serious juvenile property crime is much higher on the Sunshine Coast - almost six offences per 1,000 population each year. Underage serious drug crimes (that is, excluding marijuana) are also much higher than average here.
Low education levels are also a concern. The Sunshine Coast has more high school dropouts than B.C. as a whole and more students whose reading, writing and math test scores are below average. From 2001 to 2003, 30 per cent of 18-year-olds did not graduate, which is about five percentage points higher than the provincial average.
There are more than 1,000 single-parent families on the Coast, amounting to 28.5 per cent of all families with children. That's almost three percentage points higher than the B.C. average. Single parent families on the Sunshine Coast average $28,383 in annual income, while two-parent families average $61,252. And 42 per cent of the Coast's welfare caseload is single parent families, five percentage points higher than the B.C. average.
One real problem for single-parent families is the lack of affordable rental housing. Rents average $651 a month on the Coast, while homeowners pay an average $724 a month for housing. But the tenants are much less able to afford those housing costs than the homeowners. Almost half the tenants on the Sunshine Coast are paying more than 30 per cent of their income on housing costs, five percentage points higher than the provincial average. By contrast, only 19 per cent of Sunshine Coast homeowners are paying more than 30 per cent of their income for housing.
The statistics look rosier from a senior's point of view. The Sunshine Coast is one of the "grayest" parts of B.C. According to the 2001 census, 30 per cent of our population is 45 to 64 years old, the highest proportion of baby boomers of any region in the province. Another 18.8 per cent of Sunshine Coasters are over 65. B.C. Stats projects that by 2013, 22 per cent of our population will be senior citizens.
Overall, our seniors are better off than many in the province. Only 1.2 per cent of our senior citizens receive the maximum government income supplement, compared to 3.3 per cent of seniors in all of B.C. Those well-off seniors are an economic mainstay of the Coast. In 2000, 19 per cent of Sunshine Coast employment was still in the forestry industry. Very likely, the next census will show that number has dropped. The other major employer is the public sector, which provides 20 per cent of the jobs.
But only about 66 per cent of the Sunshine Coast's income comes from employment, and only about 40 per cent of adults work full-time. What keeps our economic boat afloat, to a large extent, is non-employment income. About 16 per cent of local income comes from government transfers and 17 per cent from "other" sources, including pensions and investment income for all those Sunshine Coast seniors.
