With so much attention given to the business of selling houses (and, now, losing houses to banks), it may be easy to forget that few Americans actually change residences in any given year. According to the Census Bureau’s recently expanded American Community Survey (which uses polling data covering three years), 83.5 percent of Americans in […]
Robert David Sullivan
Posted inEconomy
Emptied nests
Failed mortgages are almost always more common in lower-income areas, but in the current housing crisis, all of the Bay State’s foreclosure hotspots are in communities with relatively low home values (see “Broken Homes”). During the last housing crash, in 1992 and 1993, there were predictably high foreclosure rates in cities like Brockton and Lowell, […]
Posted inPolitics
Free riders
Massachusetts, once known for its raucous politics, now ranks last in the nation in the percentage of voters with a choice as to who represents them in the State House. There are both Democratic and Republican candidates in only 27 of 160 state representative districts this year. (With contests in five of 40 Senate seats, […]
Posted inEconomy
Tax poll
A proposal to eliminate the state’s income tax is back on the ballot this year, after losing 40 percent to 48 percent, with 12 percent of voters blanking on the question, six years ago. That vote coincided with a gubernatorial election in which Republican Mitt Romney did not endorse the measure but ran a “tough […]
Posted inPolitics, Transportation
Statistically Significant
Illustrations by Travis Foster Commuter trains to nowhere Increased commuter-rail service is a key component of “smart growth,” but not all train stops allow for car-free living. Some are simply too far from supermarkets, hardware stores, fitness clubs, and the like. According to the website WalkScore, which gives locations “walkability” scores ranging from 0 to […]
Posted inEconomy
Statistically Significant
Illustrations by Travis Foster FORECLOSURE CRISIS FLOODS DOUBLE-DECKERS The current foreclosure wave in Massachusetts has knocked down a disproportionate number of multifamily homes, at least compared with the housing market crash of the early 1990s. That’s one finding in Subprime Facts: What (We Think) We Know About the Subprime Crisis and What We Don’t, a […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
The price of prisons
What part of state government is growing faster than education or Medicaid? Nationwide, spending on correctional facilities jumped by 9.2 percent in fiscal 2006, second only to transportation, according to One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008. The report from the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Public Safety Performance Project warns that “prison costs are blowing […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Politics
Play money
During tough fiscal times, arts and sports programs are often the first to get cut from municipal budgets. So it’s not a big surprise that the “culture and recreation” category, which accounted for 2.68 percent of all spending in the average Bay State community in fiscal 2000, had dwindled down to 2.08 percent in fiscal […]
Posted inEducation
Pay scale
Teaching jobs in Massachusetts public schools may not pay as well as such private-sector occupations as nursing and technical writing, but in most communities teachers are doing relatively well, financially. The list below shows average salaries for selected occupations during 2006, and both elementary and high school teachers make more, on average, than police officers, […]
Posted inEducation
Raising the bar
By most measures, K-12 public education in Massachusetts is in better shape than in other states. We can boast higher scores on standardized tests, more spending per student, and fewer students per teacher. Bay State schools also stand out as having low “overhead,” meaning the share of education spending devoted to administration rather than actual […]