In 1980, Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan, running against Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, asked voters, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Note that he said “you,” not “we” or “the United States.” Reagan believed that when things get better for individuals, society is better off; since his victorious campaign, few American […]
Robert David Sullivan
Posted inUncategorized
Statistically Significant
Illustrations by Travis Foster Getting our Irish up Here’s another way in which Massachusetts is different from the rest of the nation. The US Census Bureau reported this summer that German remains the most common ancestral group in the US, with 15.2 percent of respondents claiming that label on the 2000 Census “long form.” But […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service
CommonWealth Forum totes up assets and opportunities
INTRO TEXT “Asset inequality” is a major reason why African-Americans continue to lag behind white Americans in terms of homeownership and education, agreed several speakers at the latest CommonWealth forum, though there was less agreement on the causes and cures of this condition. “With a Little Help From Our Friends (and Families): Assets, Race, and […]
Posted inPolitics
Bay State Nation
Read responses to this article. When the first President Bush ran for re-election in 1992, he cautioned the electorate against voting for a governor from Arkansas. “We do not want to be the lowest of the low,” Bush said, referring to literacy rates, poverty levels, and other measures that did not reflect well on the […]
Posted inEconomy
Who profits from federal spending
The Big Dig notwithstanding, Massachusetts is one of the biggest losers in the tax-and-spend game run by the federal government. According to the Washington, DC-based Tax Foundation, in fiscal year 2002 the state got only 75 cents in federal expenditures in return for every tax dollar Bay State residents sent to the nation’s capital. Since […]
Posted inPolitics
No-party animals
Source: Elections Division, Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Office (www.sec.state.ma.us) As of February, 49.8 percent of Massachusetts voters were unenrolled in any party—a slight drop from the February 2000 high point of 50.3 for the independence movement (or non-movement), which has come back from a low of 35.3 percent in 1968. Going into this election year, […]
Posted inHealth Care
A century of healthy bestsellers the skinny on childbirth trends east versus west in the Bay State emulating Popeye stress and depression in Boston and New Bedford
Big sales for light reads In any given week, as many as half of the nonfiction bestsellers in the US are health-related–with diet books the most common subgenre. That wasn’t always the case, and a look at Publishers Weekly annual bestseller lists over the past century shows that the reading habits of the health-conscious have […]
Posted inEducation, Health Care
Insurance coverage in the workplace the spread of community health care centers college education and exercise heart disease cancer and asthma rates
Under coverage Massachusetts has one of the lowest percentages of people without health insurance, but it might do even better if more private employers picked up the tab. According to a recent report in Governing magazine, almost 72 percent of adults under 65 working in the Bay State receive insurance at their workplace (as of […]
Posted inUncategorized
Bed scores
Unlike Dunkin’ Donuts outlets, hospitals don’t necessarily mirror population trends. According to the most current figures provided by Bay State hospitals to the American Hospital Directory, staffed beds are relatively plentiful in Berkshire and Hampden counties (which have been bleeding residents in recent years) and relatively scarce in fast-growing southeastern Massachusetts. Hospitals are shrinking in […]
Posted inUncategorized
Without a hitch
Unmarried couples remain a relative rarity in Massachusetts, according to the 2000 US Census. Of the 1.33 million households headed by self-described couples, only 130,919 are headed by unmarried partners. Among those living together without benefit of marriage are 7,943 gay male couples and 9,156 lesbian couples. Not surprisingly, Provincetown is the least matrimonial community […]