A decade of change : Investigation into the health and social wellness of Newfoundland and Labrador communities pre and post moratorium

This was especially pronounced in the high fishing dependent communities and among men; • The skewing of the age distribution with an increase in the proportion of seniors, especially in fishing dependent communities; • a decrease in the number of live births, again especially in the high fishing dependent communities. [...] My father has sent the crew home early for the second year in a row the cod so scarce he can do the work himself and still have time to sit in the evenings time to think about the flour and molasses the netting, the coils of rope and twine the tea and sugar and salt he took on credit in the spring Every night he dreams of them being plentiful the size of the fish years ago big around as your thigh [...] The current study extends the work of Fowler and Murray17 to consider all communities on the island of Newfoundland, to access a wider range of social and health datasets, to extend the period of time investigated, and to consider a range of social factors that might mediate the impact of the economic changes on the health status of the communities. [...] Using a large range of administrative databases the study has two primary aims: 1) To describe the changes in health status in fishing dependent and non-fishing dependent communities in the province before and after the introduction of the Atlantic Canada groundfish moratorium, and 2) To explore possible mediating mechanisms that explains variability in the reaction of the communities. [...] Selection of Data Source for Community Fishing Classification Due to the limitations of EI data and DFO survey data, it was decided that the number of TAGS recipients in a community as a proportion of the community’s total population was the best indicator of a community’s dependency on the cod fishery for employment and income.