The examination of community-level economic sustainability indicators in Canada

The need for more accurate economic sustainability indicators within sustainable forest management has been suggested by a number of authors. A literature review helped to identify the most common and most respected indicators of economic sustainability. This study's main intent was to examine how increases in forest economic activity (expressed as forest dependence) affect these measures of economic well-being. The 1986, 1991, and 1996 Canadian census were used as the primary data sources with the census subdivision (CSD) as the unit of analysis. Frequency and distribution graphs were used to provide some insight into the changes in indicators over time, and correlation analysis was employed to examine correlations between the indicators and forest dependence. Within each time period, forest dependence was negatively correlated with median household income, and positively correlated with the unemployment rate, and the incidence of low income for people living in private households.;The empirical models in this study were specified as random effects panel regressions. These models showed that forest dependence was positively and significantly related to a CSD's unemployment rate and to the incidence of poverty for people in private households. Additional relationships were defined by examining the impact that other variables such as economic diversity, trade exposure, and aggregate demand have on indicators at the CSD level.