Population density is a standard yardstick of development, but assessing it is trickier than it seems. According to the standard measure of density, communities in southeastern Massachusetts seem to have a lot of elbow room (see smaller map). For example, as of early 2000, fast-growing Plymouth was still more sparsely populated than the MetroWest suburb […]
Robert David Sullivan
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Revolting development
Popular culture is filled with sympathetic characters who provide food for our tables, from Ernest Borgnine’s lonely butcher in the 1955 film Marty and the sweet-tempered grocer Mr. Hooper on the children’s TV series Sesame Street to all those movie farmers triumphing over flash floods, early frosts, and bank foreclosures so that we never run […]
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Statistically Significant
Illustrations by Travis Foster BIGGER, TALLER, COOLER Calling them McMansions may be an exaggeration in most cases, but as a rule, single-family homes were indeed built on a larger scale in 2004 than they were three decades earlier. Since the early ’70s, the Census Bureau has been reporting on the characteristics of new housing units […]
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Statistically Significant
Illustrations by Travis Foster CURBS ON TEEN DRIVING PAY OFF More restrictions on driving by 15- to 17-year-olds have significantly reduced traffic deaths in that age group, according to a recent study by a Swarthmore College economics professor. Thomas Dee concluded that “graduated driver licensing,” which imposes restrictions on new drivers such as nighttime curfews […]
Posted inEconomy
Bread winners
The business of making things is still strong in much of central Massachusetts, as well as parts of the Merrimack Valley and the southeastern region of the state. But curing other people is how more Bay State residents earn a living. The larger map below shows which economic sector is predominant among workers (not residents) […]
Posted inEconomy
Flying solo
Additional research by Eric Wagner The self-employment sector is often depicted as a haven for nonconformists, so maybe it’s appropriate that there seems to be an infinite number of ways to count Americans working on their own. Our chart uses data from the Social Security Administration, which offers the advantages of exact figures (rather than […]
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Florida dreaming
Illustrations by Elizabeth Rock In The Rise of the Creative Class, economist Richard Florida wrote that gays are good for a region’s economy. In his new book, The Flight of the Creative Class, he tells us that immigrants are even better — and America is in danger of getting a lot fewer of them. The […]
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Statistically Significant
Illustrations by Travis Foster GREEN CARS MAY HIT GLASS CEILING Hybrid cars, which are partly powered by electric batteries and thus burn less gasoline, are surging in popularity, according to automotive industry analyst R.L. Polk & Co. The number of hybrid cars registered last year was 83,153, an annual increase of 81 percent. Massachusetts ranked […]
Posted inPolitics
A Toast to the General Court
Illustration By Nick Galifianakis We don’t know for certain that the Massachusetts Legislature was the state’s most exclusive speakeasy during Prohibition. True, contraband liquor was stored in the basement of the State House, but as for the accusation by the Massachusetts Anti-Saloon League that lawmakers celebrated the close of the 1927 session with a drunken […]