The Changing Face of Massachusetts is a joint project of MassINC and the Center for Labor Market Studies and was made possible by the generous support of a number of sponsors, including the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, Verizon, Citizens Bank, Polaroid, and Bank of America’s Frank W. and Carl S. Adams Memorial Fund. The demographics read more
The Massachusetts Nonprofit Sector: An Economic Profile, made possible through the generous support of the Mellon Charitable Giving Program/Alice P. Chase Trust and The Boston Foundation, and in partnership with the University College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. This new report shows that Massachusetts nonprofits contribute substantially to the Bay State economy. read more

The Graying of Massachusetts

Aging, the New Rules of Retirement, and the Changing Workforce

Many Massachusetts workers will face a stark choice in the coming years: Retire later or retire with less money. Our findings show that powerful trends are converging at once to alter the retirement landscape: An aging population that has not saved enough must adjust to new Social Security rules that delay full benefits from the read more

The Pursuit of Happiness

A Survey on the Quality of Life in Massachusetts

The Pursuit of Happiness: A Survey on the Quality of Life in Massachusetts highlights data from a 1,001-person statewide poll conducted for MassINC by Princeton Survey Research Associates (margin of error: + or – 3%). Respondents were asked more than 60 questions related to their own and the state’s quality of life, their views on read more
This research report uses data from the 2000 and 1990 Censuses to track developments in median income for New Hampshire families over the past two decades. Among its key findings is that the typical New Hampshire family, which enjoyed above average real income growth over the 1980s, struggled to keep ahead of the increases in read more
The new research finds that the path to economic success for Massachusetts families and workers is narrow and unforgiving, and those who stumble pay dearly. The report argues that the difficulty today in obtaining, or holding onto, a reasonably secure middle-class standard of living is the result of fundamental changes in the “recipe” for achieving read more

The Road Ahead

Emerging Threats to the Massachusetts Economy

The report includes detailed analysis on the economic condition of workers and families in Massachusetts, the soaring costs of housing and the state’s high personal tax burden, the state’s slow labor force growth rates, the troubling out-migration of young, college-educated workers to other states, the growing trends of income inequality across families and across regions, read more

Lessons Learned

25 Years of State Economic Policy

Are you interested in cutting through the partisan rhetoric about the state’s role in economic policy? Would you like to know what some of the state’s most experienced policy-makers–from both parties–would say about economic policy if you could get them around a table working as a group? If so, you’ll be fascinated by this report–the read more

Closing the Gap

Raising Skills to Raise Wages

This report is a primer on the three vital rungs of our state’s workforce development system: adult basic education, job training programs, and our community college system. It received widespread media coverage, and is now inspiring numerous efforts to improve the state’s disparate efforts to empower citizens to improve their education and skill levels. Here read more

Our sponsors