More Children Killed, Wounded by Guns Across US; Study Suggests Handguns in Households Key Culprit

The conclusions and the statistics, in a study presented to the American Academy of Pediatrics were stark and sobering:

• Hospitalizations and in-hospital deaths for children with gun shot wounds are increasing in the U.S.  Currently, over 7,500 children are annually hospitalized for gun shot wounds, including over 500 in-hospital deaths.
• While recent policy proposals to limit military-style semi-automatic assault weapons are important, handguns remain the leading injurious agent and may be a more efficacious target.
• There was a significant relationship between percentage of household gun ownership and percentage of gun shot wounds occurring in the home.
• Policies designed to reduce the number of household firearms, especially handguns, may reduce childhood gun shot wounds. Household gun ownership and safety practices vary widely by state.

In “United States Gunshot Violence—Disturbing Trends,” researchers from Boston and Michigan reviewed statistics from the Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID) from 1997, 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2009 (for a total of 36 million pediatric hospital admissions), and estimated state household gun ownership using the most recent Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data (2004).

Between 1997 and 2009, hospitalizations from gunshot wounds increased from 4,270 to 7,730, and in-hospital deaths from 317 to 503, the researchers found.  The study also found a significant association between the percentage of gunshot wounds occurring in the home and the percentage of households containing any firearms, loaded firearms and unlocked loaded firearms.

“Handguns account for the majority of childhood gunshot wounds and this number appears to be increasing over the last decade,” said lead study author, Arin L. Madenci, MD, MPH, University of Michigan Medical School. “Furthermore, states with higher percentages of household firearm ownership also tended to have higher proportions of childhood gunshot wounds, especially those occurring in the home,” Madenci told MSNBC.  Madenci, and his colleague, Dr. Christopher Weldon, a surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital, conducted the research.

Among homes with children, rates of gun possession ranged from a national low of 10 percent in New Jersey, for instance, to 62 percent in Montana, the researchers found.

According to the Connecticut Office of Child Advocate, between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2012 (a 12-year period), 94 children in Connecticut died from gunshot wounds. During that period 924 children were injured by guns. Nearly half, 44 percent, died in Hartford, New Haven or Bridgeport, or towns nearby the report noted.  Just over one-third (36 percent) involved children between 2 and 14 years old.  The datawas issued a month after the murder of 20 school children and six adults in Newtown.  "The circumstances of the other 74 child deaths and the vast majority of injuries from guns in this state," the Child Advocate report said, " are very different - single incidents ... with roots in factors underlying community violence."

“Policies designed to reduce the number of household firearms, especially handguns, may more effectively reduce the number of gunshot injuries in children,” said Dr. Madenci.

Stamford is #1 in USA in Workers with College Degree; Geography Key to Job Prospects

Stamford ranks first in the nation in the percentage of workers with a college degree, according to a  book that features an analysis of  the influences of geography on jobs, highlighting tremendous disparities that exist in cities across the country and citing innovation as a key jobs driver.

 “The sheer size of the differences between American communities is staggering," the book stated. " Stamford, Connecticut, the city with the largest percentage of college-educated workers in the United States, has five times the number of college graduates per capita as the city at the bottom, Merced, California.”

The New Geography of Jobs, written by Enrico Moretti, a professor of Economics and the University of California, ranked 306 of the nation’s metropolitan areas.  In the ranking, Waterbury was among the metropolitan areas with the smallest share of workers with a college degree, at 15 percent.

Stamford, with 56 percent, led the list, topping Washington, DC (49%), Boston (47%), Madison (47%) and San Jose (47%), which rounded out the top five metropolitan areas in the country.  Completing the top 10 metropolitan areas with the largest share of workers with a college degree is Ann Arbor (46%), Raleigh-Durham(44%), San Francisco-Oakland (44%), Fort Collins-Loveland, Colorado (44%), and Seattle-Everett, Washington (42%).  Yuma, AZ and Merced, CA, both at 11 percent, ranked last.

Moretti’s research and analysis reveals that the “new geography of jobs is benefitting centers of innovation,” and “among the beneficiaries are the workers who support the idea creators.”  He indicates that “for every new innovation job in a city, five additional non-innovation jobs are created, and those workers earn higher salaries than their counterparts in other urban areas.”

According to the book, the average salary of college graduates in Stamford is $133,479 and the average salary of high school graduates is $107,301.  Moretti points out that “the more college graduates there are (in a metropolitan area) the higher the salaries for high school graduates are.”  Overall, “the earnings of a worker with a high school education rise by about 7 percent as the share of college graduates in his city increases by 10 percent,” a statistical analysis indicates.

Morelli also notes that the education level of the workforce not only impact salaries, but also the level of charitable contributions.  “Among large U.S. metropolitan areas, charities in five brain hubs – Stamford, Boston, Raleigh-Durham, Washington, D.C., and New York – receive the highest contributions relative to their population.”

The book also ranks Stamford as the metropolitan area with the second highest cost of living in the nation, behind only San Jose, CA, and just ahead of San Francisco-Oakland-Vallejo, California.  Also in the top 20 cities with the heist cost of living is Bridgeport, at number 17.

The New Geography of Jobs was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012. Moretti is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley where he holds the Michael Peevey and Donald Vial Career Development Chair in Labor Economics. He is the Director of the Infrastructure and Urbanization Program at the International Growth Centre (London School of Economics and Oxford University).

CT Should Look to New York, Aging Workforce, Urban Centers to Rebuild Economy

Connecticut would be foolish not to take greater advantage of the fact that nearly one-third of the state is within the financial orbit of New York City as it looks to rebuild its economic strength – while not overlooking the potential for entrepreneurial activity across the state.

Those were among the lead suggestions of a panel of economists and entrepreneurs at the University of Hartford looking at job prospects for today’s 20-somethings, in a program sponsored by CT Mirror.

Daniel Kennedy, Senior Economist in the Office of Research at the state Department of Labor emphasized that the strongest economic growth in the state in the years to come will be in Fairfield County, and evidence of that trend is already present in the current economic recovery.

Wayne Vaughn, president of Hartford-based Fuscient, which he launched in 1997, said the state should “play to its strengths,” in looking to Fairfield County.  He said that New York City's immense economy "bleeds over into one-third of our state."  He also called on the state’s colleges and universities to step up efforts to match students with mentors in the business community, to improve their workforce readiness.

The state’s college graduates should not sell the state short, offered Katelyn Anton, Community Manager of New Haven-based Independent Software, and a key contributor to Whiteboard, a popular blog for the technology and entrepreneurial community in the state.  “Connecticut is one of the ripest locations in the world,” for start-up ventures, she said, noting the growth of co-working spaces in New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, Manchester and other communities, and the numerous incubator opportunities that individuals “can tap into.”

Connecticut Business and Industry Association (CBIA) economist and vice president Peter Gioia predicted that the state’s economy is “on the cusp of turning the corner,” noting that between 15 and 20 percent of today’s workforce will be retired within five years – creating job vacancies and opportunities for young people.  He predicted that as the workforce ages out of the market, the state’s workforce will need electrical line workers, plumbers, electricians, commercial loan officers, actuaries and financial planners, and some of that need is already apparent.

Gioia praised the state’s recent efforts to bolster the University of Connecticut and the state’s community colleges, underscoring the correlation between “where students go to school and where they get their first job.”  If students stay in the state for college, Connecticut businesses will ultimately benefit.

Kennedy said the state’s prolonged economic recovery is characterized by continued “demand deficient unemployment,” which is more structural than merely a reaction to the national downturn that began in 2008.  He indicated that even as some sectors are improving, many millennials remain underemployed -college graduates working in service, rather than professional, industries.

“More people are working, but they’re not making as much,” said Orlando Rodriguez, a senior policy fellow at Connecticut Voices for Children.  “For every job we lose in the financial industry, it takes eight and a half jobs in the restaurant industry.”

Rodriguez also raised a cautionary note, stating that Connecticut should be particularly concerned about young people in the state’s urban centers who do not attend college, and often are unable to obtain a first job. While statewide unemployment hovers around 8 percent, it can run as high as 40 percent among 18-24 year olds in Bridgeport and other urban communities. “Connecticut’s future,” Rodriguez said, “is in urban areas.”

Gioia was strongly critical of Congressional inaction on immigration reform, stating that the nation’s economy would be strengthened by a comprehensive policy.  “Immigrants are much more likely to start a business, and become net employers of Americans.”  He said the policy of educating foreign students, but not permitting them to then remain in the U.S., as “ridiculous.”  He also cited Canada as an example of a nation that has been more welcoming of immigrants, to the benefit of the nation’s economy.

Vaughn said that while his biggest challenge in doing business in Connecticut is retaining talent, the growth of technology in business transactions offers businesses here significant opportunities.  “Where your business is located doesn’t dictate who your customers are,” he said.

The discussion was the second of nine panels on a range of topics sponsored by The Connecticut Mirror to be held around the state in coming months.  It was moderated by Brett Ozrechowski, CEO-Publisher of the CT News Project, which operates CT Mirror.  Next month, discussions will be held  Nov. 7 at Fairfield University focused on measuring good teaching and Nov. 18 at the University of New Haven on the topic of the clean energy economy.

Connecticut “Ideas Worth Spreading” Resonate in Massachusetts in TED Talks

TED came to Springfield, Massachusetts this month with a decidedly Connecticut flavor, as a quarter of the featured speakers offering “ideas worth spreading,” hailed from the “still revolutionary” state.

Of the 16 “TED talks” on the agenda during a day-long program sponsored by and held at the headquarters of Mass Mutual, four of the speakers were from Connecticut, and left the specially selected audience intrigued, impressed and inspired.

Well known worldwide, TED is a nonprofit which began decades ago with a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become considerably broader, and “TED Talks” – widely available on the web – have become a global phenomenon, watched by tens of millions.

TED conferences “bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives.”  That’s precisely what occurred at TEDx in Springfield, where in addition to speakers touting the possibilities for that post-industrial urban center, a wide array of innovative subjects were featured under the theme “Driving innovation through diversity and inclusion.”

The Connecticut quartet at TEDx Springfield:

• Keisha Ashe is co-founder and CEO of ManyMentors, a nonprofit science, technology, engineering and math STEM) mentoring organization that connects minority and female middle and high school students with encouraging and supporting near-age mentors in the STEM fields.  “If they never know, they’ll never go,” is the guiding phrase of the initiative, reflecting the fact that many women and minority students are not encouraged to pursue the STEM fields, and are often unaware of the career potential or their own aptitude for the STEM careers.  Ashe is a Ph.D. candidate in Chemical Engineering at UConn.
• Maureen Connolly is an event planning professional with extensive national and international experience across diverse markets, and a visionary and passionate leader skilled at creating high impact programs with measurable results.  She is the foremost advocate for utilizing public celebrations as a means of extending social capital by having the community, rather than the event, at the core of planning.  She has written on the enduring transformational potential of public celebrations, and offers that “now is the time to harness that collective energy and accumulated social capital as a catalyst for social change” that will develop collaborations with the potential to breathe new life into hard-pressed cities.
• David Ryan Polgar is a Connecticut-based writer/attorney/educator and highly regarded tech ethicist who speaks on the topics of information overload, digital diets, and creativity.  He is an award-winning columnist for Seasons magazine, and has been featured in national media. Polgar speaks and writes about the ethical, legal, sociological, and emotional issues surrounding our relationship to technology.  He has created a “Mental Food Plate” as an approach to achieving deeper levels of thinking, and explores the imperative for an industry to develop that will serve as a counterbalance to the burgeoning technologies that “we can’t stop consuming.”
• Jon Thomas is the founder of Tap Cancer Out, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu nonprofit and host of the most philanthropic martial arts events in the world.  Jon Thomas and his wife Becky run the Stratford-based nonprofit “in the slivers of spare time between their jobs in advertising.”  The nonprofit was founded out of a desire to respond to the devastation of cancer through a sport that Thomas was deeply involved with.  The organization raises funds – all donated to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society - through hosting fundraising tournaments, direct donations, merchandise sales and sponsorships.

The TED website points out that “TED is best thought of as a global community, welcoming people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world.”  TEDx Springfield was organized by Jae Junkunc of Hartford, from Mass Mutual's Enterprise Risk Management Group, with support of a 15-member team that developed the program over six months.

TED includes the award-winning TED Talks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize. The TEDx program gives communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are planned and coordinated independently.

A TEDx session in Hartford in June included talks by David Fink of Partnership for Strong Communities, Steven Mitchell of East Coast Greenway, Donna Berman of Charter Oak Cultural Center, and Rich Hollant of CO:LAB, among sixteen local speakers.

WNBA Leads Major Sports in Gender, Racial Diversity; Baseball Mirrors Society Best

The WNBA received a combined grade of A+ for race and gender diversity, after earning and A+ for race and an A+ for gender in the 2013 WNBA Racial and Gender Report Card, produced by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (TIDES) based at the University of Central Florida.

The study provides an analysis of the racial breakdown of the players and management in the league office and at the team level. It also looks at team general managers, coaching staffs and other support personnel.

Meanwhile, the Institute’s comparison of the racial breakdown of players in major league baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, also released this month, shows that baseball has a demographic breakdown that more closely reflects the nation’s demographics. But the most diverse league – in terms of players as well as the front office – is the WNBA.

Richard Lapchick, the director of TIDES and primary author of the report, said, “The WNBA continues to set the standard for racial and gender diversity amongst all professional leagues.”

Among the key statistics compiled by TIDES highlighting the WNBA:

• At 67 percent, women held the highest percentage of assistance coaching positions in the history of the WNBA, setting a new mark for the second consecutive year.
• The percentage of people of color holding professional level staff positions in the WNBA League Office increased from 29 to 33 percent while the percentage of women increased by 8 percentage points.
• WNBA players of color increased by five percentage points in 2013.
• Nine women and seven people of color had ownership positions on a WNBA franchise in 2013.  Most were limited partners.
• The number of women in the top management role increased from two to five women CEO/Presidents from 2012 to 2013.

Locally, of the 24 individuals highlighted on the Connecticut Sun website as members of the team staff, 12 are women and two are individuals of color.  The CEO and VP/General Manager are men, and the head coach, Anne Donovan, is a woman.

Laurel J. Richie, the first woman of color to become president of a professional sports league, continued the WNBA’s tradition as professional sports’ most diverse organization.  Richie, a veteran marketing executive, brought more than three decades of experience in consumer marketing, corporate branding, public relations and corporate management, when she was appointed President of the WNBA, in 2011.

Many would argue that baseball is no longer "America's Pastime", but strikingly the racial composition of the average major league team corresponds almost perfectly to their proportions in American society, the Institute noted.“It truly is the game that looks like America the most, the other major sports leagues do not even come close,” the organization pointed out, as reflected in an Infographic on the website visually.

The WNBA Racial and Gender Report Card is the third report issued thus far in 2013 after the releases of the reports on Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association earlier this year.

CT is Top 10 State in Percentage of Seniors in Workforce;Both Men and Women Highly Ranked

Connecticut is among the nation’s leading states in the percentage of senior citizens – men and women age 65 or older – still in the workforce.  The Land of Steady Habits placed in the top ten for both men and women, and showed increases in the percentage of seniors in the workforce compared with 2000, reflecting a national trend.

Connecticut is ranked 9th in the nation in the percentage of female senior citizens in the workforce, with 14.7 percent.  The state is 7th nationwide in the percentage of male senior citizens in the workforce, with 23.8 percent.

Looking at the percentage of senior female workers, the top ten are Alaska (with 20.7%), Nebraska, District of Columbia, South Dakota, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Maryland, Connecticut and North Dakota.  The lowest percentage was in Michigan at 9.2 percent.

In Connecticut, 9.2% of women age 65-69 are working, 3.3% of women age 70-74, and 2.2% of women 75 years old or older.  The overall percentage of women seniors in the workforce in Connecticut increased from 9.9% in 2000 to 14.7% in 2011.

Using U.S. Census data, Bloomberg.com ranked the U.S. states and the District of Columbia based on the percentage of female seniors employed.  Figures are calculated by dividing the number of females aged 65+ and employed by total population of females aged 65+.   The male population was calculated in a similar fashion.

Connecticut ranked 7^th in the nation in the percentage of male senior citizens in the workforce.  Data for male senior citizens indicate that in Connecticut, the overall percentage in the workforce is 23.8 percent, with 13.3% of those age 65-69, 5.6% of those 70-74 and 4.4% of male seniors age 75 or older still working.

The top ten states in the percentage of male senior citizens in the workforce are District of Columbia, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, North Dakota, Maryland, Connecticut, Vermont, Alaska and Massachusetts.  The lowest percentage was in West Virginia, with 13.5 percent.

CT Residents Are Driving Less, Reflecting National Trend

Connecticut residents have cut their per-person driving miles by 3.45 percent since 2005, while the nation’s long term driving boom appears to have ended, according to a report by the ConnPIRG Education Fund. The decline in driving is a national trend, with 46 states including Connecticut having reduced per-person driving since the middle of the last decade.

The 31-page report, “Moving Off the Road: A State-by-State Analysis of the National Decline in Driving,” is based on the most current available government data. The average number of miles driven by Americans is in its eight consecutive year of decline, led by declines among Millennials. Connecticut has had the slowest decline in driving in New England, but has the second lowest vehicle miles traveled per person in region, behind Rhode Island. The national trend in driving peaked in 2005.

“It’s time for policy makers to recognize that the driving boom is over. We need to reconsider expensive highway expansions and focus on alternatives such as public transportation and biking—which people increasingly use to get around,” said Abe Scarr, Director of the ConnPIRG Education Fund.

“The Millennial generation is leading the decrease in driving and will be using and paying for our transportation system for years to come.  It is critical that Connecticut plans a system that reflects how people are getting around and want to get around,” said Scarr.  The report noted that “the evidence suggests that the nation’s per-capita decline in driving cannot be dismissed as a temporary side effect of the recession.”

Earlier this year, Governor Malloy and Department of Transportation Commissioner James Redeker launched a multi-year strategic planning process, Transform CT, which aims to “improve economic growth and competitiveness, build sustainability, and provide a blueprint for a world-class transportation system.”  

Transform CT has established an interactive website to gather public input which has collected nearly 300 comments, suggestions or ideas to date, and will be updated with topics and polls regularly as the strategic plan is developed over 18-20 months. In addition, a series of events will be held throughout the fall to engage the public on the future of transportation in Connecticut.

 “Connecticut’s investment in critical transit projects like CTfastrak and the New Haven-Springfield commuter rail line show that transportation decisions better reflect changing travel preferences of residents,” said Ryan Lynch, associate director for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a non-profit policy organization.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to reducing car dependency in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, celebrates its 20th anniversary with a fundraising benefit in New York City on November 7.  The Campaign was formed in the early nineties as a response to the mounting economic and environmental costs of automobile and truck dependence and promising reforms in federal transportation policy. Among the organization’s board members is Norman Garrick, Director of the Center for Transportation and Urban Planning at the University of Connecticut.

North Dakota, Nevada, Louisiana and Alabama are the only states in the nation where driving miles per capita in 2011 were above their 2004 or 2005 peaks, the ConnPIRG report found.  Meanwhile, since 2005, double-digit percent reductions occurred in a diverse group of states: Alaska, Delaware, Oregon, Georgia, Wyoming, South Carolina, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Florida.

The states with the biggest reductions in driving miles generally were not the states hit hardest by the economic downturn, according to the ConnPIRG report. The majority—almost three-quarters—of the states where per-person driving miles declined more quickly than the national average actually saw smaller increases in unemployment compared to the rest of the nation, according to the report.

Sports Statistics Conference Features Sabermetrics As Part of National, Global Focus on Influences of Stats

Connecticut-based ESPN is among the sponsors for the upcoming New England Symposium on Statistics in Sports, to be held on September 21 at Harvard University, that will include a panel discussion to feature Eric Van, sabermetric baseball operations consultant for the Boston Red Sox, Ben Baumer, who handled statistical analysis for the New York Mets from 2004 through 2012, and Vince Gennnaro, a consultant to a number of Major League Baseball teams during the past decade.

Panel moderator is Andy Andres, head coach and lead instructor of the MIT Science of Baseball program and Fenway Park datacaster/stringer for mlb.com.    Featured speakers are Jim Albert of Bowling Green State University, on “Assessing Streakiness in Home Run Hitting,” and Richard Smith, of the University of North Carolina, who will present for the first-time a statistical model for predicting the finish times of individuals who were running in the 2013 Boston Marathon but were unable to complete the race, as previously reported by Connecticut by the Numbers.

The Symposium is a meeting of statisticians and quantitative analysts connected with sports teams, sports media, and universities to discuss common problems of interest in statistical modeling and analysis of sports data. The symposium is part of a year-long series of programs and events around the world during the International Year of Statistics.

In addition to the featured presentations, the scheduled presentations at the Sept. 21 Symposium will focus on statistical research and analysis conducted in areas including:

• statistics-based revisions to defensive alignments in the NBA,
• how weather affects the knuckleball,
• whether crossing helps or hurts scoring in premier soccer, and
• trends such as match time and game duration in professional tennis.

Co-chairs of the conference are Mark Glickman, Senior Statistician at Boston University and Scott Evans, Senior Research Scientist at Harvard.   Registration is now open for the day-long symposium.

ESPN operates a Stats & Info blog that shares with fans the information that the ESPN Stats & Information Group provides to its production teams around the company. The Stats & Info blog's content is a must-read at ESPN - on-camera talent, producers, bloggers, columnists and editors use Stats & Info insight on a daily basis. Individuals can subscribe to the blog for around-the-clock notes, stats and trends, using a blend of traditional statistics and the advanced metrics that the network describes as  the "next level."

Industry sponsors Sports Data Hub, ESPN Stats & Info, RStudio and Revolution Analytics, as well as the Harvard Statistics Department, the Boston Chapter of the American Statistical Association, and the Section in Sports of the American Statistical Association are providing support for the conference.

National Outreach Symposium in November

Sports are but one aspect of the growing use of statistics throughout everyday life.  The U.S. government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics is working with other federal agencies to host an outreach symposium November 13 and 14, 2013 to celebrate the International Year of Statistics 2013.

The goal of this two-day event is to present an overview of statistical methodologies and how they can be applied to diverse applications in econometrics, demography, medicine, agriculture, energy, transportation, and more. The audience for the planned symposium, to be held in Washington, D.C., will come from a diverse background of users and consumers of government statistics, data, and analyses.

The objectives of the International Year of Statistics initiative and  awareness campaign are to increase public understanding of the power and impact of statistics on all aspects of society, and nurture statistics as a profession, especially among high school and college students.

Organizers of the year-long effort – with than 2,000 participating organizations world-wide - note that “statistics have powerful and far-reaching effects on everyone, yet most people are unaware of their connection—from the foods they eat to the medicines they take—and how statistics improve their lives.” In Connecticut, participating organizations include the University of Connecticut and Connecticut by the Numbers.

More People Working From Home in Connecticut, Nationally

“Technologically-enabled opportunities for telework could be one factor contributing to the reduction in driving,” according to a report issued by ConnPIRG which has identified a drop in driving frequency in nearly every state in the nation, including Connecticut.

The report, “Moving Off the Road: A State-by-State Analysis of the National Decline in Driving,” notes that “the internet and other communications technologies have enabled many people to perform work from home that could only be done in an office previously. Email, conference calls, videoconferencing, and shared digital files have made it far easier for people to “telecommute” from home. In this way, telework might reduce household driving by eliminating commuting trips.”

The number of people who work from home a majority of the time stood at 4.3 percent in 2011.Counting a broader measure of all workers who report that they perform some of their job from home at least one day a week, 9.5 percent did so by 2010, up from 7 percent in 1999.

The most recent National Household Travel Survey indicates that 9 percent of city commuters telecommute even once per month, compared to 14 percent of suburban commuters and 10 percent of rural and town commuters, the report indicated.

According to the report, it is more common for people to work from home in New England and the entire West, except Nevada. One reason for differences may be the industrial make up of states, since working from home is more feasible in some types of work than others. The following figure bears out the ambiguous relationship between working from home and the volume of driving.

 ConnPIRG Education Fund, a 501(c)(3) organization, works to protect consumers and promote good government. ConnPIRG Education Fund offers an independent voice that works on behalf of the public interest, investigating problems, crafting solutions, educating the public, and offering meaningful opportunities for civic participation.

The new ConnPIRG analysis and report found that after sixty years of almost constant increases in the annual number of miles Americans drive, since 2004 Americans have decreased their driving per-capita for eight consecutive years. Driving miles per person are down especially sharply among Millennials, America’s largest generation that will increasingly dominate national transportation trends.

The website Global Workplace Analytics reports that regular telecommuting grew by 73% between 2005 and 2011 compared to only 4.3% growth of the overall workforce (not including the self-employed). Growth within different sectors of the workforce varied widely:

• Federal employees - 424% growth
• State government employees - 114% growth
• Not-for-profit employees - 85% growth
• For profit employees - 63%
• Local government employees - 67%

While many conjectured that telecommuting would decline during the recession, it actually grew by 11.4% from 2008 to 2011.   Based on current trends, with no growth acceleration, regular telecommuters will total 4.9 million by 2016, a 69% increase from the current level, according to Global Workplace Analytics, which conducts independent research and consult on emerging workplace issues and opportunities.

CT is Among Leaders in Long Marriages, Less Popular for Divorcees

It seems that Connecticut is a great place for a long marriage and those who have never been married, and not so popular for divorced individuals.  Data indicate that Connecticut ranks #12 in longest married residents, #14 in never-married residents, #32 in currently married residents and #33 in divorced residents –as a percentage of population, comparing the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

Bloomberg Visual Data ranked the U.S. states and the District of Columbia based on the median duration of current marriages in years which was calculated by averaging the medians for males and females for each state, using the 2011 U.S. Census American Community Survey data.

The top ten states for longest marriages, based on the median duration of current marriages in years, were South Dakota (23.1 years), West Virginia (23.0), Maine (22.8) , North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Vermont (22.4), Iowa (22.1) Montana, Wisconsin(21.8), Nebraska (21.7) and Delaware 21.5).  Tied with Connecticut at #12 is Michigan, at 21.4 years.

In every state in the nation, at least a quarter of residents ages 15 and older have never married.  Far outdistancing the field is the District of Columbia, where 58 percent have never married – the only instance where that number exceeds half the population.  Next highest is New York, with 37.7 percent, followed by California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Illinois, Louisiana, New Jersey Mississippi, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Georgia.  Connecticut is next, with a third of the population – 33.1 percent – never having been married.

When comparing the estimated percentage of those currently married, Connecticut ranks at #32, with 48.4 percent.  Topping the list is Utah with 56.2 percent, Idaho at 55.5 percent and New Hampshire at 53.6 percent.

New Jersey and New York have the lowest percentage of divorced people in the U.S., at #49 and #50 respectively in the estimated percentage of divorced residents.  Connecticut ranked at #33, with 10.7 percent of the population (age 15+) being divorced.  The most divorced residents?  Nevada at 14 percent, followed by Maine at 13.7 percent and Arkansas and New Mexico, tied at 13.4 percent.