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Working Paper
Voting with their feet?: local economic conditions and migration patterns in New England
Over the past several years, policymakers and business leaders throughout New England have expressed concern regarding the region's ability to attract and retain skilled workers, given the economic climate of the region compared with other parts of the nation. Indeed, net domestic migration for New England became increasingly negative after the 2001 recession, as the number of people leaving the region exceeded those entering. Examining the factors underlying these migration trends is important for determining what role, if any, public policy might play in addressing their potential impact on ...
Working Paper
Childhood lead and academic performance in Massachusetts
It is now widely accepted that childhood exposure to even low levels of lead can adversely affect neurodevelopment, behavior, and cognitive performance. Using individual-level data on childhood lead levels and test scores in Massachusetts, this paper investigates the link between lead levels in early childhood in the 1990s and student test scores in elementary school in the 2000s. Elevated levels of blood lead in early childhood are shown to adversely impact standardized test performance, even when controlling for community and school characteristics. Accordingly, public health policy that ...
Working Paper
Municipal aid evaluation and reform
The distribution of unrestricted municipal aid has been a major policy concern in many states. Using Massachusetts as a case study, this paper examines the extent to which unrestricted municipal aid is responsive to the variation in the underlying fiscal health of municipalities. The paper uses a measure of ?municipal gap??based on local economic and social characteristics outside the direct control of local officials?to indicate the underlying fiscal health of cities and towns. The analysis finds large disparities in municipal gaps among Massachusetts cities and towns, and that those ...
Working Paper
The dynamic between municipal revenue sources and the state-local relationship in New England
This working paper was written for the New England Public Policy Center?s third annual conference: ?The Dynamic between Municipal Revenue Sources and the State-Local Relationship in New England?. It relies on data from the U.S. Census to examine the dynamic between municipal revenues and the state-local relationship in New England. The analysis shows that?compared with the nation as a whole?municipal governments in New England rely very heavily on the property tax. They also have limited or no access to local-option revenues such as sales taxes, and they rely less on fees and other nontax ...
Working Paper
The labor market for direct care workers
As the baby boom cohort nears retirement age, the question of how to provide necessary health care and personal services to a growing elderly population has become a looming policy problem. Beginning in 2020, the number of Americans over the age of 65 will surpass the number of primary providers of formal and informal long-term care (women between the ages of 20 and 44). Perceptions of shortage and very high turnover in today?s direct care labor market are compounding the potential problem. ; This paper provides an overview of the labor market for direct care workers in the United States, ...
Working Paper
Do loans increase college access and choice?: examining the introduction of universal student loans
The returns to college are substantial, including increased earnings and public benefits, such as better health and increased involvement in public service and giving. As a result, since the introduction of the Guaranteed Student Loan program in 1965 and the Pell Grant in 1972, the federal government has experimented with using financial aid to increase college access, choice, and affordability. ; Although years of research support the notion that financial aid can influence students' post-secondary decisions, questions remain about the best ways to design such programs and the relative ...
Working Paper
Measuring fiscal disparities across the U. S. states: a representative revenue system/representative expenditure system approach, fiscal year 2002
States and their local governments vary both in their needs to provide basic public services and in their abilities to raise revenues to pay for those services. A joint study by the Tax Policy Center and the New England Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston uses the Representative Revenue System (RRS) and the Representative Expenditure System (RES) frameworks to quantify these disparities across states by comparing each state?s revenue capacity, revenue effort, and necessary expenditures to the average capacity, effort, and need in states across the country for fiscal year 2002. ...
Working Paper
Public-private partnerships, cooperative agreements, and the production of public services in small and rural municipalities
Using data from approximately 1,000 small and mostly rural municipalities from Illinois, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, the authors study choices in production arrangements over a wide range of services, and examine a variety of contracting options available to local governments. The data reveal that municipalities often rely on contracts to provide an extensive list of services. ; The use of for-profit contractors and cooperative agreements with other governments correlates negatively with population. Nonetheless, small municipalities are less likely to use competitive bidding processes, ...
Working Paper
Unaffordable housing and local employment growth
High housing prices have caused concerns among policy makers as well as the public in many U.S. regions. There is a general belief that unaffordable housing could drive businesses away and thus impede job growth. However, there has been little empirical evidence that supports this view. In this paper, we clarify how housing affordability is linked to employment growth and why unaffordable housing could negatively affect employment growth. We empirically measure this effect using data on California municipalities and U.S. metropolitan areas and counties. It is argued that for various reasons a ...
Working Paper
The lack of affordable housing in New England: how big a problem?: why is it growing?: what are we doing about it?
Although housing costs in greater Boston and elsewhere around the region have leveled off, affordable housing is still high on the public policy agenda in every New England state. A growing chorus of employers and policymakers are warning that the region's high cost of housing is now undermining its ability to attract and retain workers and businesses. This paper presents a thorough, region-wide analysis of the housing affordability problem in New England. We construct three affordability indicators to examine differences in the cost of housing across socioeconomic, demographic, and ...