MASS Migration

Through a detailed analysis of IRS migration data and Census 2000, we offer the definitive look at who has been moving in and out of Massachusetts during the last dozen years. While the numbers show us how the Bay State has changed in the recent past, they also herald a future that may surprise you. read more

Topic(s): Jobs and Economic Security, Strong Communities, Economic Development, Research

Head of the Class

Characteristics of Higher Performing Urban High Schools in Massachusetts

Jennifer Candon, Maxine Minkoff and S. Paul Reville

With few exceptions, urban high schools that serve high proportions of low-income and minority youth are failing to meet the academic needs of their students, according to a new study released by the Center for Education Research and Policy at MassINC. Using a range of indicators, some of which include: attendance rates, drop-out rates, college read more

Topic(s): Education, Strong Communities

The State of the American Dream in Massachusetts, 2002

Andy Sum, Nathan Pond, Mykhaylo Trub'skyy, Neeta Fogg, Abilasha Rao, Ishwar Khatiwada, Sheila Palma, Paul Harrington, Alex Plotkin, Jacqui Motroni and Gursel Aliyev

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

Topic(s): Education, Jobs and Economic Security, Economic Development, New Skills for a New Economy, Research

From Cell to Street

A Plan to Supervise Inmates After Release

Anne Morrison Piehl

This report begins and ends with a concern for the public safety of hardworking, law-abiding citizens of the Commonwealth. Our citizens deserve safe neighborhoods where their children can play on the streets, businesses can thrive, the elderly can walk without fear, and neighbors can congregate at night on their front porches. In recent years, much read more

Topic(s): Criminal Justice, Strong Communities

New Skills for a New Economy

Adult Education's Key Role in Sustaining Economic Growth and Expanding Opportunity

Andy Sum, Mykhaylo Trub'skyy, Sheila Palma, John Comings, Johan Uvin, W. Neal Fogg, Maricel Santos and Lisa Soricone

According to this new groundbreaking report from MassINC, more than a third (1.1 million) of Massachusetts’s 3.2 million workers are ill equipped to meet the demands of the state’s rapidly changing economy. This threatens the state’s ability to sustain the current economic boom and traps the workers themselves in jobs with little opportunity to advance. read more

Topic(s): Education, Jobs and Economic Security, New Skills for a New Economy, Research

Opportunity Knocks

Training the Commonwealth's Workers for the New Economy

Ralph Whitehead, John D. Donahue and Lisa M. Lynch

With the recent passage of the Workforce Investment Act in Washington, states have more freedom than ever before to set their own objectives in job training policy and pursue creative new ways to reach their goals. While the new federal policy doesn’t force states to comprehensively reform themselves, it does loosen the reigns so that read more

Topic(s): Jobs and Economic Security, New Skills for a New Economy

The Changing Workforce

Immigrants and the New Economy in Massachusetts

Andy Sum, Mykhaylo Trub'skyy, Neeta Fogg, W. Neal Fogg, Julia Kroshko, Sheila Palma, Paul Suozzo and Christopher Harrington

The Massachusetts economy may be booming, but have you ever wondered where local companies, large and small, are finding their new employees? The answer will surprise you. The Changing Workforce, a joint research project of MassINC and Citizens Bank, discovered that since the mid-1980s foreign immigrants, not native-born workers, account for an astounding 82 percent read more

Topic(s): Jobs and Economic Security, Research

Prisons and Sentencing in Massachusetts

Waging a More Effective Fight Against Crime

Robert Keough

Does Massachusetts need more prison space to keep crime in check and improve public safety? Who’s in prison now? Are we filling our prisons with the right people? The answers contained in this investigative report on our corrections system may surprise you. For instance, contrary to popular perception an inflow of low-level drug offenders is read more

Topic(s): Criminal Justice, Strong Communities

The Road Ahead

Emerging Threats to the Massachusetts Economy

Andy Sum, Anwiti Bahuguna, Neeta Fogg, W. Neal Fogg, Sheila Palma and Paul Suozzo

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

Topic(s): Jobs and Economic Security, Economic Development

Lessons Learned

25 Years of State Economic Policy

Frank T Keefe, Joseph D. Alviani, Alden S Raine and Mark E. Robinson

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