Percentage of Drivers Age 85 and Older: Connecticut Leads USA

Connecticut has more than double the percentage of licensed drivers age 85 and older than any other state in the nation, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

In the Land of Steady Habits, 5.1 percent of all drivers – a total of 152,233 people – were age 85 or older, ranking Connecticut at the top of the state-by-state ranking.  The second place state, Maine, had 2.34 percent of its licensed drivers in that demographic.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports that 29 states and the District of Columbia have additional license renewal procedures for older drivers, often age 65 or 70 and older.  In Connecticut, people 65 and older may choose a 2-year or 6-year renewal cycle. A personal appearance at renewal generally is required. Upon a showing of hardship, people 65 and older may renew by mail. There are no additional requirements for older drivers, according to the Insurance Institute.

Bloomberg ranked the U.S. states and the District of Columbia on the percentage of licensed drivers ages 85 and older, using data from the Federal Highway Administration.  (The data was for 2011, the most recent year available.)

The Age 85+ Rankings (percent of licensed drivers)

1.  Connecticut        5.10%
2. Maine                   2.34%
3.  Alabama              2.23%
4. Vermont              2.22%
5.  Minnesota          2.11%
6. New York            2.09%
7. Nebraska             2.02%
8.   South Dakota     1.99%
9.  Florida                  1.98%
10. Pennsylvania     1.98%

Rhode Island ranked #11, New Jersey was #15, Massachusetts was #17 and New Hampshire was #28 among states in our region.

Although they only account for about 9 percent of the population, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics show senior drivers account for 14 percent of all traffic fatalities and 17 percent of all pedestrian fatalities, ABC News reported last year.

The network cited a report by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety that found the rate of deaths involving drivers 75 to 84 is about three per million miles driven – on par with teen drivers. Once they pass age 85, vehicular fatality rates jump to nearly four times that of teens.  The Insurance Institute reports that the increased fatal crash risk among older drivers is largely due to their increased susceptibility to injury, particularly chest injuries, and medical complications, rather than an increased tendency to get into crashes.

An Institute study of a Florida vision test requirement for drivers 80 and older found that 80 percent of those eligible to renew their licenses attempted to do so, and 7 percent of them were denied renewal because they failed the vision test. Of those who did not seek renewal, about half said they thought they would fail the vision test.

CT State Employees: More Women Than Men, Mostly Middle-Aged

Of Connecticut’s 54,903 state employees in 2013, most were female, and between 40 and 60 years old, according to new demographic data released by the Office of Legislative Research based on information provided by the Office of State Comptroller’s CORE-CT data management system.

The breakdown comes just after indications that state governments across the country are growing at a considerably slower rate than the private sector – which is true in Connecticut as well, where public sector jobs have been shed in recent years.

According to the state employee data:

• Female state employees outnumber male state employees by 1,986
• There are 9,277 employees aged 50 through 54 – the largest age group of state employees. 55% of them are female
• 60%of state employees are between 40 and 60 years old.
• 53% of the employees between 40 and 60 are female
• 50.2% of state employees under 40 are male
• 4% of state employees are age 65 or older
• 58.8% of state employees age 70 and over are male.

The data includes employees of all three branches of government, higher education institutions, and quasi-public agencies.

Earlier this month, GOVERNING magazine reported that there hasn’t been much growth in the government sector nationwide – both federal and state governments – even as other sectors of the economy are reflecting positive growth as compared with a year ago.

A few of the nation’s larger industries have fared better than others, such as professional and business services (+3.5 percent) and construction (+3.1 percent). Total non-farm employment increased by 1.7 percent.

Meanwhile, state and local government employment hasn’t budged, the magazine reported, increasing just 0.2 and 0.4 percent, respectively. The federal government has shed an estimated 92,000 positions, a reduction of 3.3 percent.  The Labor Department reported this month that the national unemployment rate fell to 7 percent in November – a five-year low.

In Connecticut, it has been widely reported that state government had about 1,200 fewer full-time equivalent positions mid-year 2013, compared with January 2011.

Charts:  Office of Legislative Research, GOVERNING magazine

Developing Downtown Housing Above Commercial Space Brings Obstacles, Opportunities, New CT Report Finds

Connecticut's downtowns have a wealth of potential to redevelop under-utilized buildings into housing above commercial space - if mixed-use development can be encouraged through financing and favorable regulations, according to a new report from the Connecticut Main Street Center (CMSC).

The report comes at the conclusion of the first year of Come Home to Downtown, a pilot program CMSC established to encourage and facilitate viable, interesting housing opportunities while revitalizing downtown neighborhoods.  The initiative was contracted by the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) to promote housing in Connecticut's downtowns.

Three communities - Middletown, Torrington and Waterbury - as well as three property owners and their buildings, were selected as the focus of the program’s inaugural year. CMSC chose buildings typically found throughout Connecticut so they could serve as models for other towns. As a result, most of the findings expressed in the report apply to any Connecticut downtown wishing to maximize the potential of its existing infrastructure.

Among the key findings, the report indicates that mixed-use development is among the most challenging, and private owners are often in a “catch-22” as they seek financing.  Downtown management capacity is critical to the success of mixed-use development, the study found. In addition, the CMSC report explains that even when zoning regulations promote redevelopment, they are often not enough to enable mixed-use growth and a severe lack of financing impedes the growth of much-needed mixed use development.

"CMSC's report provides insights that will guide future housing development on Main Streets across Connecticut. The first year of the Come Home to Downtown program is not only creating opportunities to establish new rental housing in downtown neighborhoods, it's creating a model for other communities to follow,"   said Eric Chatman, President & Executive Director of CHFA, which has contracted with CMSC for a second year of the pilot program, which will focus on finding and creating financing.

The report's seven key findings are:

1. There is a huge amount of potential for accommodating mixed-use development - which both saves and generates monies - in Connecticut's downtowns. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the infrastructure costs to service compact, dense development like that found in mixed-use neighborhoods are one-third to one-half lower than in suburban areas. It has been estimated that every downtown in Connecticut has at least one building that is under-utilized, containing a store or restaurant on the first floor, but with upper floors that are vacant or used for storage that could instead generate income if converted to apartment homes.

2. Mixed-use development is one of the hardest types to accomplish. There are several reasons why this is the case: these buildings are usually older and in need of greater rehabilitation; they are in need of complex financing from multiple sources; combine several uses in one building (such as housing and retail space); and are often owned by people with little to no redevelopment experience.

3. A severe lack of financing impedes the growth of mixed-use development. Because these deals are so intricate and multi-faceted, financing for the total development costs rarely exists from traditional sources.

4. Education and outreach to owners of possible mixed-use property is needed. Property owners are often unprepared for the complex process of redeveloping their building and unaware of the potential benefit in doing so. Very often, they also need assistance learning how to become landlords and attract good tenants.

5. Private-owners are in a catch-22 when it comes to obtaining financing. With regard to apartment homes located in mixed-use buildings, private owners can either apply for subsidies if they place income/affordability restrictions on the apartments, or the units are not restricted, but there is no subsidy for apartments at the same rental rate.

6. Even when zoning regulations promote redevelopment, they are often not enough to enable mixed-use growth. Favorable zoning regulations are important, but they cannot create mixed-use development by themselves. Each of the pilot communities had zoning policies that allowed for buildings with a mix of uses - a practice which should be commended and encouraged - but there were still significant impediments to promoting this type of growth. In addition, lessening current on-site parking requirements as a whole will also help promote housing in our downtowns.

7. Downtown management capacity is critical to the success of mixed-use development. Any community interested in promoting revitalization of its downtown should consider enhancing its management function by becoming a resource center for mixed-use development, including convening key stakeholders, collecting data, offering education and information and coordinating development incentives.

"There is now a better understanding of what the next steps need to be, and a greater appreciation of the importance of the public-private partnership that is necessary to overcome the challenges and achieve reuse of these properties," Rose Ponte, Torrington's former Director of Economic Development, said about the new report.

 Engaging an expert team of consultants, CMSC worked with municipal officials and the building owners to develop viable redevelopment options including: determining what financing would likely be needed for redevelopment; performing an assessment of zoning and regulatory requirements; reviewing the downtown management function; and measuring the downtown's walkability. Specific recommendations for improving the buildings, including a recommended floor plan designed to attract new residents and bring market rate housing downtown, was also provided to each property owner.

Once rehabilitated, these buildings will create 60 new units of rental housing in downtown Middletown, Torrington and Waterbury, as well as make approximately 25,000 square feet of commercial and retail space available. The total development cost to renovate all three buildings is estimated to be $11.4 million.

"You see it on an almost daily basis - news articles and reports showing the demand, especially among Millennials and Baby Boomers who want to live in walkable, interesting places. It doesn't seem to matter if the downtown is large or small, as long as they can live there and get around without a car to go to the movies, grocery store or coffee shop, that's where people want to be these days," said John Simone, CMSC President & CEO.

In the pilot program’s second year, CMSC will choose two new communities while continuing to work with the property owners and municipal officials in Middletown, Torrington and Waterbury.

Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk Above National Average in Sustaining Startups, Study Finds

A new report assessing trends in start-up companies in 40 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. over the past two decades has found that the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk corridor has performed well compared with similar regions in weathering, and rebounding from, the national economic downturn’s impact on the level of start-ups.

The report by the Kauffman Foundation, “The Most Entrepreneurial Metropolitan Area?,” was recently presented to the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Entrepreneurship, the first such conference of municipal leaders devoted solely to exploring entrepreneurship.

In reviewing Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) with a population of between 500,000 and one million people, the report found that the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk MSA placed “toward the top of the group, consistently above the year-to-year changes.”  In addition, the data indicate that Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk “did not fall as far during the (economic) downturn, so it appears to have fared slightly better.”

The paper compared the trends in the 40 metropolitan areas with high numbers of start-up businesses to the significant national downward trend in overall new firm formation starting after 2006.  Nationally, the trend reversed and started to recover in 2011. No metropolitan area escaped this downward trend, but there are differences among regions in the timing of the downturn and subsequent recovery.

In counting the number of times that the annual percentage change in start-up density for each of the MSA’s, within the same size class, five of the MSA’s – including Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk – were “above average 12 times thorough the period” reviewed. The others to attain that “level of consistency” were Tulsa, OK; Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA; Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR; and Knoxville, TN.

The report also found that the largest MSAs – those with populations greater than 1 million – fared slightly better through the recession and have experienced slightly stronger recoveries, though none has returned to pre-downturn levels.

The report compared MSAs with relatively larger populations and high startup densities from among the nation’s 366 MSAs.  The MSAs were divided into four groups for purposes of comparison, those with greater than 1 million population, those with 500,001 to 1 million, those between 250,000 and 500,000, and those smaller than 250,000.

The federal government’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) provides official definitions for MSAs in the United States:  densely populated areas with close economic ties.

This Year, Brookfield, Cheshire, Simsbury Among Best Places to Live in America

The latest list of the best places to live in America, produced annually by Money magazine, places Sharon, MA atop the list, followed by Louisville, CO and Vienna, VA.  Three Connecticut towns made the list – Brookfield at #26, Cheshire at #39 and Simsbury at #50.

The annual published list varies from year to year because the criteria are not consistent.  A review of recent years indicates little overlap, as four Connecticut communities have made the list twice and eight others were “one and done,” not returning after a single appearance.

Overall, during the past four years, West Hartford has made the magazine’s list twice, in 2012 and 2010, as has Hamden, in 2012 and 2010, Simsbury in 2013 and 2011, and Cheshire in 2013 and 2011.  Single appearances were made by Norwalk, Stamford, Portland, Tolland, Greenwich, South Windsor, Fairfield, and most recently, Brookfield.

Carmel, IN, McKinney, TX and Eden Mairie, MN and Newton MA led the list of “America’s best small cities” in 2012, with Connecticut’s Greenwich (#28), Hamden (#53), Fairfield (#64), and West Hartford (#72) earning a place on the list.

A year earlier, in 2011, the top ranked Connecticut community was Tolland at #37, followed directly by South Windsor at #38 and Simsbury at #39.  That year, Cheshire was #73 and Portland was #88, and the list was dubbed “Money’s list of America’s best small towns.”  In 2011, Louisville, CO was ranked first, followed by Milton, MA and Solon, OH.

In 2010, when Eden Prairie, MN topped the list and Newton, MA ranked third, the leading town in Connecticut among “America’s best small cities” was West Hartford at #55.  The town was joined by Stamford at #78, Hamden at #87, and Norwalk at #90.

The highest ranking in recent years for a Connecticut community was Brookfield’s #26 this year, followed by Greenwich’s #28 last year.

The data for the published list is developed by Onboard Informatics, and the criteria and decision-making process is described on the CNNMoney website.

In 2013, the editors explained “we crunched the numbers in order to zero in on America's best small towns for families,” which included U.S. towns with populations of 10,000 to 50,000.   The previous year, “we looked at small cities, with populations between 50,000 and 300,000.”  In 2011, they investigated small towns, with populations between 8,500 and 50,000.  In 2010, the list was culled from a review of 800-plus U.S. cities with populations 50,000 and up.

In addition to the data compiled for the 2013 list, the magazine visited “36 towns and interviewed residents, assessed traffic, parks, and gathering places, and considered intangibles like community spirit,” according to the website.  The take-away from the visit to Brookfield, population 16,788?

“Surrounded by the largest lakes in Connecticut, Brookfield is a great spot for water recreation -- not to mention exploring lots of wooded hiking trails and open space. There are few employers right in town, so many residents commute within Fairfield County or to New York City, a 90-minute drive away.  While it is pedestrian-friendly, the town lacks a downtown. However, an area with residential and retail developments is under construction and should be completed within five years,” the website explained.

Connecticut Residents Are Extroverts, Neurotic and Open, National Study Finds

Connecticut ranks 47th among the states in conscientiousness, but #12 in extroversion and #16 in neuroticism, according to a new study published in a scientific journal and reported in TIME magazine.  Overall the state falls into the “temperamental and uninhibited” category, as does much of the Northeast, led by Vermont, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

Using personality test data from over one million people compiled over a decade, researchers identified three distinct personality regions in the country, and the degree to which each state reflected those characteristics.  The study was conducted by a multinational team of researchers led by psychologist and American expatriate Jason Rentfrow of the University of Cambridge in Great Britain. 

The study, which maps the American mood state-by state, found that West Virginia is the most neurotic state, Utah is the most agreeable (Washington D.C. – not surprisingly – is the least agreeable) and the Wisconsin has the country's most extroverted residents. The most conscientious state in the nation?  That would be South Carolina.

The Connecticut Scoreboard indicates that state residents are above the national average in three characteristics - extroversion, neuroticism and openness, but lag in agreeableness and conscientiousness. (rank among states in parentheses; a score of 50 is the national average in each category:

• Extroversion (12)  57.6
• Neuroticism (16)  53.4
• Openness (21)  53.9
• Agreeableness (43)  38.6
• Conscientiousness (47)  34.2

(sample size was 17,769)

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, spanned 13 years and including nearly 1.6 million survey respondents from the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C.. (Alaska and Hawaii were excluded because not enough people responded to the researchers’ questionnaires.)

The subjects, recruited via websites and advertisements in the academic community as well as through platforms like Facebook, were asked to take one of three different personality surveys, though the most relevant one was what’s known as the Big Five Inventory, TIME reported. The survey measures personality along five different spectra: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.

(If you’d like to take the test, it is available online from TIME.)

Each of those categories is defined by more-specific personality descriptors, such as curiosity and a preference for novelty (openness); self-discipline and dependability (conscientiousness); sociability and gregariousness (extroversion); compassion and cooperativeness (agreeableness); and anxiety and anger (neuroticism). The inventory gets at the precise mix of those qualities in any one person by asking subjects to respond on a 1-to-5 scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree, with 44 varied statements.

When the returns were tallied, TIME reported, the country broke down into three macro regions: New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, which the researchers termed “temperamental and uninhibited”; the South and Midwest, which were labeled “friendly and conventional”; and the West Coast, Rocky Mountains and Sun Belt, described as “relaxed and creative.”

Connecticut Ranks #13 in Workers Employed Here Who Live Elsewhere

The percentage of Connecticut workers who live outside the Constitution State is among the highest in the country, ranking 13th overall, at 6.4 percent.  Data from the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that Delaware has the largest percentage of workers who reside outside the state, at 14.8 percent. (The District of Columbia exceeds all the states, at 72.4 percent.)

In examining the top commuting flows from state of residence to workplace state, Connecticut ranks at #14, with 66,652 people traveling from their homes in Connecticut to work in New York.  The leading residence-to-workplace combination is New Jersey to New York, with 396,520 workers commuting from the Garden State to the Empire State for their jobs.  The other top pairs are Maryland to D.C., Virginia to D.C., New York to New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to New Jersey.

The Survey’s analysis points out that “information about commuting activity between two specific geographic areas helps define commuting patterns and provides a gauge of economic interconnectedness.”

The top 15 states, and the percentage of their workers who live outside the state’s borders, are:

1. D.C.                        72.4%
2. Delaware             14.8%
3. Rhode Island      12.8%
4. North Dakota     11.6%
5. New Hampshire 10.8%
6. West Virginia     10.0%
7. Maryland             9.1%
8. Kansas                  8.4%
9. Kentucky             7.8%
10. Missouri               7.4%
11. Vermont              7.1%
12. Virginia                 6.8%
13. Connecticut       6.4%
14. New York            6.4%
15. Massachusetts  6.3%

 The statistics in the survey, which was issued earlier this year, reflects 2011 data.  The report also noted that among U.S. workers who did not work at home, 8.1 percent had commutes of 60 minutes or longer.  New York had the highest rage of “long commutes” at 16.2 percent, followed by Maryland and New Jersey at 14.8 percent and 14.6, respectively.  In Connecticut, 6.4 percent of workers working in the state have a commute of 60 minutes or longer.

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a nationwide survey designed to provide communities with reliable and timely demographic, social, economic, and housing data for the nation, states, congressional districts, counties, places, and other localities every year. It had a 2011 sample size of about 3.3 million.

Attractive Candidates Have Evolutionary Advantage, Study Finds

Leaders of Connecticut’s Democratic and Republican parties declared victory in last week’s municipal elections around the state, and each had solid examples to back up their claims.  Writing in the Journal Inquirer, one columnist summed it up, stating that  “as usual the municipal elections were determined by local issues and personalities and both parties had successes and failures.”

 But was there a factor that crossed party lines and helped determine winners?  Were local issues and personalities only part of the story?  Was it the pretty faces that won the day, in a string of election upsets (and some less surprising results) that propelled proponents of both political parties into mayoral offices in cities and towns across the landscape?

In a new article in the journal Psychological Science, “people’s preferences for good-looking politicians may be linked to ancient adaptations for avoiding disease,” wrote Andrew Edward White, a doctoral candidates in social psychology, and Douglas T. Kenrick, a professor of psychology, both at Arizona State University.  “Modern humans,” they write, “may have a vestigial tendency to prefer attractive leaders when disease threats are looming.” (Flu season is approaching?)

The basis of their work is that “our ancestors frequently confronted devastating epidemics that wiped out many of the members of their groups; at such times, having a healthy leader might have been particularly important,” they wrote recently in The New York Times.

Their study, which tested their hypothesis in a series of tests of varying approaches and reviewed past voting patterns, produced these findings:  People who said they were concerned with disease were more likely to desire that a more attractive person take charge.  And the preference for attractive group leaders goes above and beyond the more general preferences for attractive group members.   In one segment of the study, for example, they found that “in congressional districts with elevated disease threats, physically attractive candidates are more likely to be elected.” Their study abstract points out that “experimentally activating disease concerns leads people to especially value physical attractiveness in leaders.”

In their research paper, titled “Beauty at the Ballot Box:  Disease Threats Predict Preferences for Physically Attractive Leaders,” they conclude that “the link between disease and leader preferences aligns with other new findings showing that disease concerns are connected in functional ways to a host of human decisions,” noting that their work is part of a “larger program of research exploring how human decision making reflects the influence of our evolutionary past.”

Photo montage:  First-term winning candidates of Mayoral elections in Connecticut on November 5, 2013.

Majority of Students in 17 States Are Low Income, Study Finds; Connecticut Schools Among Most Income Diverse, Except in Cities

Echoing concerns that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” a new study is raising alarm about the dramatically increasing percentage of low income students in American public schools – and the implications for the education of a generation of school children.

A new study from the Southern Education Foundation shows that 17 U.S. states have reached an unenviable tipping point: the majority of students in their public school systems receive free lunches — effectively indicating that the public school systems in these states can now be described as institutions that mostly serve the poor, rather than public institutions that serve a representative cross-section of their state’s population.

As states coast-to-coast reach that new imbalance – particularly in the South and West – the Northeast, including Connecticut, continue to have the smallest percentages of low income students in their public schools, according to the most recent data used in the study, from 2011. The states with majority-poor school systems include almost the entire South, as well as Oregon, Nevada, and California.

The study pointed out that “from 2001 through 2011, the numbers of low income students in the nation’s public schools grew by 32 percent – an increase of more than 5.7 million children. As a result, low income students attending the nation’s public schools moved from 38 percent of all students in 2001 to 48 percent in 2011.”

In Connecticut, the percentage of low income students in public schools was only 34 percent, among the lowest percentages in the nation.  Only four states had a lower or equal percentage – New Hampshire (25%), North Dakota (32%), New Jersey (33%) and Massachusetts (34%).

The largest percentage of low income students were in Mississippi (71%), New Mexico (68%), Louisiana (66%), Oklahoma (60%), Arkansas (60%), Georgia (57%), Kentucky (57%), Florida (56%), Alabama (55%), Tennessee (55%), South Carolina (55%) and California (54%).

Overall, the rates of low income students in the public schools, by region, was 53 percent in the South, 50 percent in the West, 44 percent in the Midwest and 40 percent in the Northeast.  The national average was 48 percent. As the report pointed out, “in 2011 the nation stood within only two percentage points of enrolling a majority of low income students in public schools across 50 states.”

The study  also compared the rates of low income students in cities, suburbs and rural areas in each state.  In each of the nation’s four regions, a majority of students attending public schools in the cities were eligible for free or reduced lunch.

The Northeast had the highest rates for low income school children in cities: 71 percent. The next highest rate, 62 percent, was found in Midwestern cities. The South had the third highest percentage of low income students in the cities – 59 percent.  In Connecticut, 62 percent of students in the cities were low income students, compared with 26 percent in the suburbs and 13 percent in rural areas.

“Low income students are concentrated in the nation’s cities but are by no measure confined to only cities,” the study noted.  “Forty percent or more of all public school children in the nation’s suburbs, towns and rural areas are low income students.”

 The report, released in October 2013,  indicated that low income students “generally are more likely to score lowest on school tests, fall behind in school, fail to graduate, and never receive a college degree,” and yet “the growth in the number of low income students far out-stripped the growth in per pupil spending in public schools during the last decade in every region of the country, except the Northeast.”  The nations per pupil expenditure (adjusted for inflation) in public schools increased by only 14 percent – less than half the rate of growth in the numbers of low income students,” according to the report.

The study concludes by stating that “The trends of the last decade strongly suggest that little or nothing will change for the better if schools and communities continue to postpone addressing the primary question of education in America today: what does it take and what will be done to provide low income students with a good chance to succeed in public schools? It is a question of how, not where, to improve the education of a new majority of students.”

The Southern Education Foundation’s mission is to advance equity and excellence in education for low income students and students of color.  The Foundation’s “core belief is that education is the vehicle by which all students get fair chances to develop their talents and contribute to the common good.”

CT Drops Among States But Exceeds National Average in Opportunities Available to Residents

A new report and analysis focusing on four “impact areas” of daily life – opportunity, economy, education and community - has determined that Connecticut exceeds the national average in each category, by at least five percentage points and as much as nearly seven.  Overall, the state ranked 13^th in the U.S., with a score of 56.9 out of 100 in the study's index, designed to measure economic, academic, civic and other key factors.  The state ranked 10^th a year ago, and is the only state to fall out of the top 10.

The top 10 states in the latest analysis are Vermont, Minnesota, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, South Dakota and Maryland.   In addition to Connecticut, three other states (Montana, Oregon and Pennsylvania) dropped as many as three slots in the state-by-state rankings.

According to the report, developed by Measure of America  and Opportunity Nation, Connecticut did better than the national average in  mean household income, the number of banking institutions, and the percentage of households with high speed internet.  The state also exceeded the national average in the percentage of 3- and 4-year olds attending preschool and the percentage of the population (age 25 and older) with an associate degree or higher.  The unemployment rate in Connecticut was higher than the national average, but the percentage of the population with earnings below the poverty line was less than the average nationally.

Perhaps surprisingly, the percentage of students who graduate from high school on time (within four years) is below the national average – 75.1 percent in Connecticut as compared with 78.2 percent nationally.

The Opportunity Index focuses on the conditions present in different communities and is designed to connect economic, academic, civic and other factors together to help identify solutions to lagging conditions for opportunity and economic mobility.  From preschool enrollment to income inequality, from volunteerism to access to healthy food, expanding opportunity depends on the intersection of multiple factors, Opportunity Nation's website explains.  The Index is designed to provide policymakers and community leaders with a powerful tool to advance opportunity-related issues and work, advocate for positive change and track progress over time.  

In the area of community health and civic life, the level of volunteerism among Connecticut residents exceeds the national average, as does the   number of primary care providers (per 100,000 population) and the percentage of adults who are involved in social, civic, sports and religious groups.  Violent crime is below the national average and the percentage of youth, ages 16-24, not in school and not working is also below the national average, at 12.3 percent as compared with 14.6 percent nationwide.

Nationally, almost 6 million young people are neither in school nor working, according to the study - almost 15 percent of those aged 16 to 24 nationwide who are neither employed or in school, the Associated Press reported.  In Connecticut, 12.3 percent of those aged 16 to 24 are not working either at a job or in class, the study found.

The study also determined that 49 states have seen an increase in the number of families living in poverty and 45 states have seen household median incomes fall in the last year, the AP reported.