though state finances are back at a point where almost everyone agrees that spending must be brought “under control,” Massachusetts already has fewer government employees, when taking into account our size, than most other states. Part of this is because bigger states tend to get by with proportionately smaller staffs. But the Bay State is […]
Robert David Sullivan
Posted inPolitics
Statistically Significant
Illustrations by Travis Foster big employers still hold sway in bay state Politicians in Massachusetts often refer to the economic importance of smaller employers (for instance, in her speech on the night of the September primary, GOP gubernatorial candidate Kerry Healey worried about burdens on “the small businesses that create half the jobs” here), but […]
Posted inEconomy
Where the economic action is
after ranking 13th in growth of gross domestic product (GDP) over the period from 1997 through 2004, Massachusetts came in a lowly 42nd the following year, behind every northeastern state except Maine. We now account for 2.62 percent of the aggregate for all state GDPs. That’s down from our peak during the past four decades—2.98 […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Cherry pie
the low-income cities of Lawrence and Holyoke are the only two communities in the state that will receive more than $2,000 per citizen in state aid during the current fiscal year, according to the Cherry Sheet Manual published by the Department of Revenue (see the larger map below). Meanwhile, only one town will reap less […]
Posted inEconomy, Health Care
Spend shift
A long line at JP Licks is an inconvenience, but it may also signal a turning point in Boston’s spending habits. While the rest of the country spends less and less on food, we’ve started a reverse trend, devoting more of our paychecks to eating in and dining out—which may explain the recent proliferation of […]
Posted inPolitics
Statistically Significant
Illustrations by Travis Foster the graying of the do-gooders According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, volunteerism is on the decline in Massachusetts, while it’s flat in the nation as a whole. The CNCS survey indicated that 27.0 percent of Bay State residents over 16 did volunteer work in 2005, down from 28.2 […]
Posted inUncategorized
New neighbors
Cape cod apparently saw a lot of moving vans last year, but the South Coast was unusually quiet in home-buying activity. The larger map below shows the number of single-family homes and condos (both new and pre-owned) sold for every 10,000 current residents in each town. Provincetown (population: 3,400), was the clear leader in the […]
Posted inUncategorized
New states for newcomers
Massachusetts has long been losing native-born citizens to New Hampshire. Are we about to start losing immigrants to our northern neighbor too? To be sure, the immigrant population in the Bay State has grown briskly since 2000, based on recent estimates by the US Census Bureau. We’ve moved up to ninth place in the percentage […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Statistically Significant
Illustrations By Travis Foster hedging on pork futures Notwithstanding our fame as the site of the “Big Pig” tunnel project, the Bay State gets only scraps of pork from the federal government, according to Citizens Against Government Waste. The “taxpayer watchdog” group says that Massachusetts won $18.25 in “pork per capita” in fiscal year 2006, […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
The price of justice
despite its lower-than-average crime rate, Massachusetts ranks near the top in state spending per capita on the criminal-justice system. One reason is that the Bay State tends to spend more on all government functions, but the percentage of financial resources devoted to fighting crime is also high here. As of 2003, nearly one in seven […]