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Report
Reaching the goal: expanding health insurance coverage in New England: current strategies and new initiatives
As the number and percentage of people without health insurance continues to climb, the goal of expanding such coverage is even more pressing. Traditional strategies have had only limited success. And with little movement at the federal level, states have chosen to enact their own bold initiatives. Four New England states - Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont - have recently passed or implemented programs to expand health insurance coverage, some with the goal of achieving near-universal coverage. By combining different strategies from across the political spectrum, the new ...
Report
Achieving greater fiscal stability: guidance for the New England states
This report considers the New England states? past preparedness for revenue downturns caused by business cycle fluctuations and assesses policy actions that could promote greater fiscal stability in the future.
Report
Why New England’s Labor Force Participation Has Been Recovering So Slowly since the COVID-19 Pandemic
This report investigates a variety of factors that may explain why New England experienced a participation recovery gap from 2019 through 2023 and discusses the resulting policy implications.
Report
Local Zoning Laws and the Supply of Multifamily Housing in Greater Boston
Housing affordability is a significant issue in many U.S. metropolitan areas, including Greater Boston. Affordability has always been a major challenge for low-income renters; however, even middle-income families now face considerable affordability hurdles, particularly in metro areas with strong labor markets. Where people live has important implications for their health, schooling, and economic mobility. Researchers and policymakers have devoted attention to the role of land-use practices, such as regulating residential zoning, in creating housing affordability problems, particularly in the ...
Report
Racial and Socioeconomic Test-Score Gaps in New England Metropolitan Areas: State School Aid and Poverty Segregation
Test-score data show that both low-income and racial-minority children score lower, on average, on states’ elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. While different levels of scholastic achievement depend on a host of influences, such test-score gaps point toward unequal educational opportunity as a potentially important contributor. This report explores the relationship between racial and socioeconomic test-score gaps in New England metropolitan areas and two factors associated with unequal opportunity in education: state equalizing ...
Report
Occupational Licensing and Occupational Mobility in New England
Occupational licensing—mandatory credentialing that allows a worker to practice a particular profession—varies greatly throughout New England and the United States in terms of which occupations require a license in a given state and the scope of the necessary qualifications. Given a growing share of US workers who are licensed, it is increasingly important to understand how these differences in licensing policy affect markets. Such knowledge can then be used to guide how occupational licensing regulations are structured. The research in this report shows that a labor market implication of ...
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A portrait of New England's immigrants
This research report uses the most recent available data to construct a detailed demographic, labor, and socioeconomic portrait of New England?s immigrants. It is the latest in a series of publications from the Center on the movement of people into and out of our region. ; The report evaluates the size, relative share, settlement patterns, and national origins of the region?s immigrants, and explores how these have changed in recent decades. It then describes the demographic characteristics of the region?s foreign-born residents, and analyzes their labor force behavior. Finally, the report ...
Report
Consequences of state disinvestment in public higher education: lessons for the New England states
Public higher education produces many benefits that are vital to the New England economy, but it is increasingly at risk following years of state budget cuts. States have reduced funding for higher education to address short-term budget gaps caused by recessions and long-term budget gaps attributed to the growing costs of Medicaid and public pensions. Research in this report shows that reductions in state appropriations have resulted in higher tuition and fees, greater student loan debt, decreased resources for education and research, and fewer graduates and approved patent applications from ...
Report
Medication-assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder in Rhode Island: Who Gets Treatment, and Does Treatment Improve Health Outcomes?
Since the early 2000s Rhode Island has been among the states hardest hit by the opioid crisis. In response, the state has made it a priority to expand access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder (OUD), which refers to the use of the FDA-approved medications methadone, buprenorphine, and/or naltrexone in conjunction with behavioral therapy. MAT is strongly supported by scientific evidence and endorsed by US public health officials and yet fails to reach many OUD patients. Using administrative data covering medical treatments and selected health outcomes for more than ...
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Reforming Connecticut’s Education Aid Formula to Achieve Equity and Adequacy across School Districts
Connecticut’s public K–12 education system relies heavily on local funding, resulting in substantial disparities between affluent districts and low-income districts with a large proportion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students whoare more costly to educate. Despite recent improvements, the existing state aid formula has been criticized for failing to provide sufficient funding to districts with the fewest resources and the highest education costs. To help improve state aiddistribution, this report estimates a “cost-capacity gap,” which measures the difference between a ...