Youth Face Substantial Challenges in Fairfield County, Report Reveals

There are significant unmet needs among the children and youth of Fairfield County, with over 800 students dropping out of high school each year, 1 in 8 youth ages 16-24 unemployed and over 2,600 youth ages 16-19 neither employed nor in school, according to a new report by Connecticut Voices for Children.  Youth well-being differs from town to town and city to city according to the report, commissioned by Fairfield County’s Community Foundation. The outcome disparities “present a threat not only to the children, families and neighborhoods of Bridgeport, but also to Fairfield County,” the report concluded, noting that Bridgeport today educates as many students as Westport, Wilton, Weston, New Canaan, and Darien combined.  The report indicates that Fairfield County’s future lives in its cities and depends very much on the success of its vulnerable children and youth.

The purpose of the report is to inform and develop Fairfield County's Community Foundation’s Thrive by 25 Program, to help Fairfield County young people achieve self-sufficiency by age 25. The report points out that “Fairfield County’s 100,000 young people ages 16 to 24 face youth unemployment rates between 13.6 percent and 49.5 percent, one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets, and a shortage of living-wage entry jobs.  When large numbers of young adults remain dependent on family or relocate for jobs, their futures are shortchanged and their communities decline.”

Looking across the towns of Fairfield County, large disparities in relative opportunity emerged in the study. Six “very high opportunity towns” stood out clearly among their peers, the report highlighted: Darien, Westport, New Canaan, Wilton, Weston, and Easton are among the wealthiest towns in the United States. Unsurprisingly, few children in those towns face the sort of barriers to opportunity children typically face in Bridgeport, Stratford, Norwalk, Stamford, and Danbury, the report said.

Five relatively “low opportunity towns” also stood out: on nearly every indicator they fell in the bottom third of Fairfield County’s 23 towns. “Even more disturbing,” the report emphasized, these “low opportunity towns” were home to racially concentrated areas of poverty: “not only is youth opportunity lower, but that lower opportunity affects mainly children of color,” the Voices report indicated.

The 27 page report includes town-by-town breakdowns for each of Fairfield County’s 23 municipalities, including breakdowns of specific data for 20 distinct factors in the areas of Family, Community and School.  The assessment includes the percentage of the population that includes families in poverty, unemployment, housing unaffordability, preschool experience, median income and on-time graduation from high school.

The report indicated that Danbury has the highest proportion of students learning English in Fairfield County (21 percent), and a rate of student arrest twice that of Bridgeport, Norwalk and Stamford.  Over one-third of Danbury children live in households with income below 200 percent of the poverty level, which is $47,700 for a family of four.  Among the other data revealed in the report:

• Bridgeport is the city in Fairfield County with the greatest need, with over 1,100 disconnected youth 400 annual high school dropouts and a youth unemployment rate of 17 percent.
• Shelton (13%) and Wilton (17%) have exceptionally high rate of chronic absenteeism – on par with cities like Norwalk (12%) and Stamford (15%).
• Redding performs exceptionally low on housing affordability compared to other high opportunity towns, with almost half of housing unaffordable (45 percent).
• Stamford’s teenage pregnancy rate (3 percent of total births) is lower than in many suburban towns.

The comparison between Bridgeport’s youth and their counterparts in Westport is striking.  Bridgeport educates a student population of which nearly 40 percent never attended preschool and almost 80 percent of third graders failed to score proficient in reading, drawing from a property tax base less than one-sixth the size per pupil of Westport. In Westport, barely 5 percent of students miss preschool and only 17 percent of third graders fail to score proficient in reading. While over 400 students drop out of Bridgeport high schools each year and only 18 percent of Bridgeport students complete college within six years, Westport reports only 4 high school drop-outs per year and a 71 percent college completion rate.

Connecticut Voices for Children is a research-based think tank that focuses on issues that affect child well-being, from educational opportunity to healthy child development to family economic security. Its mission is to ensure that all of Connecticut’s children have the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

To assess specific obstacles to youth opportunity in Fairfield County and to prepare the way for new solutions, Connecticut Voices for Children constructed a Youth Opportunity Index containing over two-dozen indicators from the U.S. Census Bureau, State Department of Education, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and others. Guided by existing research, the researchers, including Ellen Shemitz, J.D., Nicholas Defiesta, and Wade Gibson, J.D., compiled family, community, and school indicators for every town in Fairfield County.

The study also assessed three measures of the number of disconnected youth in each town: the annual number of high school dropouts, the number of youth, ages 16-19 neither employed nor in school, and youth unemployment (ages 16-24). For each indicator, they assessed towns’ standing relative to one another. They then looked across indicators and assessed how each town stacked up relative to others in Fairfield County. In addition, Fairfield County as a whole was compared with the broader State of Connecticut.

Religion Slipping Away From Millennial Generation

A major academic study into millennials and religion is gaining attention for its conclusion that the generation born in this century appears to be the least religious generation of the last six decades, and possibly in the nation's history. “Survey results from 11.2 million American adolescents demonstrate a decline in religious orientation, especially after 2000. The trend appears among adolescents as young as 13 and suggests that Millennials are markedly less religious than Boomers and GenX’ers were at the same age. The majority are still religious, but a growing minority seem to embrace secularism, with the changes extending to spirituality and the importance of religion as well.”

The report also indicates that “correlational analyses show that this decline occurred at the same time as increases in individualism and declines in social support. Clearly, this is a time of dramatic change in the religious landscape of the United States.”

The researchers -- including Jean M. Twenge and Ramya Sastry from San Diego State University, Julie J. Exline and Joshua B. Grubbs from Case Western Reserve University and W. Keith Campbell from the University of Georgia -- analyzed data from 11.2 million respondents from four nationally representative surveys of U.S. adolescents ages 13 to 18 taken between 1966 and 2014.

Recent adolescents are less likely to say that religion is important in their lives, report less approval of religious organizations, and report being less spiritual and spending less time praying or meditating, the researchers point out. The results were published recently in the journal PLOS One.

Compared to the late 1970s, twice as many 12th graders and college students never attend religious services, and 75 percent more 12th graders say religion is "not important at all" in their lives. Compared to the early 1980s, twice as many high school seniors and three times as many college students in the 2010s answered "none" when asked their religion.

Compared to the 1990s, 20 percent fewer college students described themselves as above average in spirituality, suggesting that religion has not been replaced with spirituality.

"Unlike previous studies, ours is able to show that millennials' lower religious involvement is due to cultural change, not to millennials being young and unsettled," said Twenge. "Millennial adolescents are less religious than Boomers and GenX'ers were at the same age. We also looked at younger ages than the previous studies. More of today's adolescents are abandoning religion before they reach adulthood, with an increasing number not raised with religion at all."

The study comes just after research released last month by the Pew Research Center that showed the portion of U.S. population as a whole that's not affiliated with any religion has climbed from around 16 percent in 2007 to nearly 23 percent last year. Christianity's share of the country's population dropped from 78 percent to under 71 percent, according to Pew.

"These trends are part of a larger cultural context, a context that is often missing in polls about religion," Twenge said. "One context is rising individualism in U.S. culture. Individualism puts the self first, which doesn't always fit well with the commitment to the institution and other people that religion often requires. As Americans become more individualistic, it makes sense that fewer would commit to religion."

Twenge and her colleagues looked at four large, nationally representative studies, according to published reports: The annual Monitoring the Future studies of eighth, 10th, and 12th graders, and the American Freshmen survey of entering college students (focusing on the years 1966 through 2014). They compared answers given by each of those groups to those given by members of previous generations at the same age.

The study finds the decline in religiosity is larger among young women, whites, those of lower socioeconomic status, and residents of the Northeast, the publication Public Standard points out. In contrast, this trend is “very small among blacks,” the researchers write, “and nonexistent among political conservatives.”

Building Character in Children Can Improve Voter Participation As Adults, Study Finds

As primary voters head to the polls in nearly two dozen Connecticut communities, with relatively low turnout anticipated, a newly released academic study on connections between childhood character-building and adult voting participation is gaining some notice. A researcher at Duke University has found that data from years of national surveys of youth reveal “a strong relationship” between measures of character in youth and the subsequent likelihood of voting, even controlling for test scores and demographics.

The study appears to have identified a causal relationship: Disadvantaged elementary-school children around the country who were randomly assigned to receive character-building education two decades ago were more likely to vote as adults by 11 to 14 percentage points.

The research paper, by John B. Holbein of Duke University, is entitled “Childhood Non-Cognitive Skill Development and Adult Political Participation.” Matching participants to voter files, Holbein found that childhood intervention had a large long-run impact on political participation.”  Non-cognitive factors were seen as at least as critical as cognitive factors – and perhaps more influential on voting behavior later in life.

The results of the study “suggest a refocusing of civics education.”  The study, published on the Social Science Research Network, concludes that “specific programs that schools implement—including those targeting psychosocial skills—appear to have a large impact on civic participation later on. This finding has important policy implications.”

In the last midterm election, in 2014, only 36.4 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot nationwide, the lowest turnout since 1942. To understand the causes of low turnout, the Census Bureau regularly asks citizens why they chose not to exercise their constitutional right, Jonah Lehrer points out on his website, summarizing that “the number one reason is always the same: ‘too busy.’ (That was the reason given by 28 percent of non-voters in 2014.) The second most popular excuse is ‘not interested,’ followed by a series of other obstacles, such as forgetting about the election or not liking any of the candidates.”

The Holbein study suggests there is more behind the lack of voting behavior than those oft-cited reasons would suggest.

Critical factors in character building are self-regulation and those involving social skills.  Components of self-regulation include, but are not limited to, grit or perseverance, emotion recognition and emotion regulation—the ability to understand and control individual affect; and inhibition, or the ability to avoid negative behavior and exhibit positive behavior.  Social skills involve the ability to work with others productively; components include the ability to communicate, build friendships, and solve group-based problems.

“Rather than focusing exclusively on the number of years a citizen spends in school, it is important to consider what context they were exposed to while in school… In a landscape of stagnant macro-level trends in participation and small estimates for many adult mobilization efforts, this finding should give scholars and policymakers renewed hope,” according to the study.

The research indicated that “interventions in early life can have large and long-lasting impacts on stubbornly low rates of political participation in adulthood. This finding suggests a reorientation of political socialization studies towards early childhood; a previously neglected critical period in the development of participatory predispositions.”  Similar research into the impact of non-cognitive learning has come away with consistent findings.

Looking ahead, the study suggests that “expanding our view in this way will help expand our understanding of why some people vote, while others do not, and how to design reforms to increase turnout, particularly among individuals with a low propensity to vote.”

CT Ranks 35th in Economic Clout of Women-Owned Businesses

Connecticut ranks 35^th in the economic clout of women-owned businesses over the past 18 years, according to a newly released analysis.  Women now run more than 9.4 million businesses in the United States, 30 percent of the nation’s businesses, with just over 100,000 of them in Connecticut Between 1997 and 2014, the number of women owned businesses in Connecticut grew by 42.1 percent, ranking the state 43^rd in the nation.  Total revenue growth of 80.2 percent ranked Connecticut 28^th, and employment growth of 20.9 percent among women owned business placed the state 22^nd among the 50 states. 

Nationwide, the number of women-owned firms grew from 5.4 million in 1997 to an estimated 9.4 million this year, an increase of 73 percent over the nearly two decades.  Employment in those businesses grew by 12 percent and sales by 78 percent, nationally.  The number of women-owned firms is increasing at a rate 1.5 times the national average.

In Connecticut, the number of businesses owned by women climbed from 72,393 in 1997 to 102.900 by this year.  Employment increased from 78,598 to an estimated 95,000, and sales grew from just over $9 million to nearly $17 million.

The industries with the highest concentration of women-owned firms nationally are healthcare and social assistance (53 percent of firms in this sector are women-owned, compared to a 30 percent share overall), educational services (45 percent), other services (42 percent), and administrative support and waste management services (37 percent).

The states with the fastest growth in the number of women-owned firms during the 18 year period are Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, North Dakota and New York.  The slowest growth has taken place in Alaska, West Virginia, Iowa, Kansas and Maine.

Since 1997, the number of female-run businesses has grown by 74 percent, well above the national growth rate of 51 percent for all firms. In 2014, women opened the doors of 887 new businesses every day, on average, up from 602 in 2011.

Women of color contributed to more than half of that growth last year, opening on average nearly 500 businesses daily, according to the new 2015 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, prepared with U.S. Census data by Womenable, a research organization supporting women's entrepreneurship, and commissioned by American Express OPEN.

Of the nation’s women-owned businesses, African-American women own 1.3 million, Latinas 1 million, and Asian women more than 700,000. Businesses owned by women of color tend to be smaller in terms of their average employment and revenue, the report indicated. But their growth, both in numbers and in their economic clout—the combined average of their growth, revenue, and employment—continues to outpace that of their white peers, the data indicates.

“Back in 1997, there were just under one million firms owned by non-Caucasian women, representing one in six (17 percent) women-owned firms. Now, there are an estimated 3.1 million minority women-owned firms, representing one in three (33 percent) women-owned firms,” pointed out Julie Weeks, President and CEO of Womenable.  “The growing diversity of women-owned firms is one of the most remarkable trends of the past decade.”

Three CT Counties Among the Nation's 244 Most Dense in Population, Comprising Half Nation's Residents

New York City's borough of Manhattan has about 1.6 million residents sharing just under 23 square miles of land. Meanwhile, 669 square mile Loving County, TX has just 86 residents, Business Insider reports in an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's population estimates and their tabulations of the land area of each county, 50.1 percent of the US population lives in the nation’s densest counties, indicated in dark purple on the illustrated map, which highlights the wide dispersion in the population density of the US's 3,142 counties. The 244 densest US counties are shown in dark purple, developed using U.S. Census Bureau data for 2014.

The nation's largest populations, by county, are in Los Angeles County, CA; Cook County, IL; Harris County, TX; Maricopa County, AZ, San Diego County, CA; Orange County, CA, Miami-Dade County, FL and Kings County, NY. 

The most populous county in Connecticut, Fairfield County, ranked 51^st by population (945,438) among the nation’s counties.  Just behind are Hartford County, ranked 59^th (897,985) and New Haven County, ranked 64^th (861,277).

All three are among the 244 densest U.S. counties that comprise just over half of the nation's population.

Go Ask ALICE – Child Care Front and Center

The phrase “go ask ALICE” may have been a lyric a few decades ago, but today it is taking on renewed significance when assessing the day-to-day life challenges of a surprisingly large segment of Connecticut’s population, an updated report by Connecticut United Ways shows. In Connecticut, 1-in-4 households have earnings that exceed the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) but fall short of a basic cost of living threshold. The United Way has defined these households as ALICE-an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, and together with the 10% of Connecticut households in poverty, more than one-third of Connecticut households (35%) are struggling to make ends meet.

The original analysis revealed last fall has now been updated and expended with new data, which indicates that cost of child care is a significant burden, and that child care is “often the single-largest expense for families with young children.”

The Connecticut ALICE Report estimates that the cost of child care for two children (1 preschooler and 1 infant) is at least 28% of the monthly expenses included in the Household Survival Budget for a family of four. In a newly released ALICE Update, the latest available cost data from 2-1-1 Child Care is used to examine the biggest child care challenges facing ALICE families in Connecticut:

1. Child care is often the single-largest expense for families with young children, with limited options for affordable infant and toddler care posing a significant challenge. This is especially true for ALICE families.
2. Child care subsidies are available for working families, but some ALICE families have earnings that exceed the eligibility threshold, and others struggle to cover the difference between the subsidy and the provider fee.
3. Availability and cost of child care varies throughout the state, limiting options for ALICE families who may not be able to find child care providers they can afford that are located near where they work or live.
4. There are limited child care options that are available during evening, night, or weekend shifts. 2nd shift, 3rd shift, and weekend hours are more common among low- to moderate-income ALICE workers. When work schedules are unpredictable, and vary from week to week, it can be hard for ALICE families to find child care when they need it.

The most recent fee data available from 2-1-1 Child Care estimates the statewide average cost of full-time child care in a licensed center-based day care setting is $211/week for 1 preschooler and $253/week for an infant, which adds up to $2,011 per month. This may be less than what many Connecticut families pay for child care each month, due to variations in cost and availability throughout the state, differences in family size, and other costs associated with child care that are not included—such as the cost of alternate care arrangements when the child care setting is closed

The report indicates that statewide, the average weekly cost of Infant/Toddler care ranges from $135 to $400 in Home-Based settings and from $175 to $400 in Center-Based settings. The high cost of Infant/Toddler care creates the greatest burden, as the weekly cost amounts to the highest percentage of median income in both Home-Based (30.9%) and Center-Based (48.8%) settings in Hartford, where the median income is $29,430/year.

Adding to the challenge posed by the high cost of Infant/Toddler care is the fact that its availability varies throughout the state. There are six municipalities in the state that have no licensed Center- or Home-Based Infant/Toddler child care providers at all, and 15 that only have a single provider offering Infant/Toddler care in their town. A total of 52 Connecticut towns have two to five providers of Infant/Toddler care, and the remaining 96 municipalities have at least six providers who offer Infant/Toddler care.

The report also indicates that “there are limited child care options available during evening, night or weekend shifts, and it can be hard for ALICE families to find childcare when they need it.”  The vast majority of Center-Based child care providers in Connecticut do not offer evening or weekend care, according to the report. Another challenge for ALICE workers without stable, predictable work schedules is that child care providers are typically paid for a full week of care in advance, whether the care is ultimately used or not. When work schedules change from week to week or on short notice, ALICE families may end up paying for child care that they do not use.

In November 2014, Connecticut United Ways released the first statewide ALICE Report, a data-driven, comprehensive research project that quantifies the situation confronting many low-income working families across our state - in our urban, suburban and rural communities. The Report documents that the number of Connecticut households unable to afford all of life's basic necessities far exceeds the official federal poverty statistics.

Correctional Institutions or Institutions for the Mentally Ill? Governments Seek New Solutions

How to effectively respond to the fact that America’s prisons have rapidly become de facto institutions for the mentally ill is increasingly gaining attention in policy circles and the news media.  In recent days, The New York Times, Governing magazine, and other publications have focused both on the alarming statistics and some innovative approaches across the country. There are now 10 times as many mentally ill people in the nation’s 5,000 jails and prisons as there are in state mental institutions, according to a study last year by the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit group that supports expanded access to treatment, the Times reported.

In Connecticut, out of the 16,154 inmates in state prisons, about 3,423 have a serious mental illness, 21 percent of the total prison population, Michael Lawlor, undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning at the Office of Policy and Management, told the New Haven Register earlier this year. Just a few years ago, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) estimated that approximately 16 percent of the state’s prison population consisted of persons with mental illness.

The State Department of Correction confirms that those defined as “seriously mentally ill” include 17 percent of the male population, 66 percent of the female population, and 20.8 percent of the overall prison population in the state.

According to the Council of State Governments, jails in the U.S. report that between 20 and 80 percent of their inmates suffer from a mental illness, Governing reported.   Today’s acute challenge has been decades in the making.  In the mid-1950’s, the publication indicated, more than 500,000 people were held in state psychiatric hospitals.  “By the 1980s that number had fallen to around 70,000.  During this period, the number of people with mental illnesses who were arrested and ended up in local jails surged.”

Chicago’s Cook County Jail, now referred to by local officials as the nation’s largest mental institution in the country, has 8,600 inmates – an estimated one-third of them suffering from mental illness.  The newly appointed warden of the facility is a clinical psychologist – underscoring “how much the country’s prisons have become holding centers for the mentally ill,” the Times reported.

Writing in the Connecticut Law Review, Christina Canales observed that “Many supported deinstitutionalization because they believed that the mentally ill would benefit from being released from the state hospitals.  They believed that with the assistance of anti-psychotic medications, the mentally ill would be able to live independently in the community and that the community mental health centers would provide the additional care, treatment, and follow up services.

“Although a good plan in theory,” Canales concludes, “deinstitutionalization quickly became one of the main reasons for the substantial increase in mentally ill people in jails and prisons. Patients were ejected from state mental hospitals at a substantially faster rate than community mental health programs were created.”

The Law Review article, published three summers ago, concludes that “the United States faces a crisis in that prisons are among the largest mental healthcare providers. Some mentally ill individuals turned to crime after deinstitutionalization left them on the streets with no support system. Others wound up in prison because police officers lacked the proper training to identify persons as mentally ill and in crisis, or mistakenly believed that individuals receive adequate treatment in prison. The change in civil commitment laws also made it harder to commit the mentally ill, and society as a whole wants these individuals punished, mentally ill or not.”

Earlier this year, the Connecticut state legislature considered – but did not approve - a bill that would have established a pilot program to serve courts in New Haven, New London and Norwich to identify and track the mentally ill, along with homeless and addicted individuals entering the criminal justice system. The idea behind it was to get these individuals treatment and help as an alternative to incarceration and to prevent future arrests, according to published reports. The initiative also called for a formal assessment of its effectiveness.

In Chicago, the Times reported, “before becoming warden, Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia oversaw mental health care at the jail, and under her guidance, Cook County began offering services that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. All inmates upon arrival now see a clinician who collects a mental health history to ensure that anyone who is mentally ill gets a proper diagnosis and receives medication. The jail then forwards that information to judges in time for arraignments in the hope of convincing them that in certain cases, mental health care may be more appropriate than jail.”

According to a report by the Virginia-based Treatment Advocacy Center, 95 percent of the public psychiatric beds available in 1955 in the country were no longer available by 2005, the New Haven Register reported.  The Center recommends a minimum of 50 beds per 100,000 people, a standard that no state meets. Connecticut has about 20 public psychiatric beds per 100,000 people, according to the center’s website. Between 1995 and 2013, the number of inpatient psychiatric beds, at both public and private hospitals, decreased from 160,645 to 107,055 nationally, according to data from the American Hospital Association.

Connecticut, which recently approved a Second Chance Society Act proposed by Gov. Malloy that reduces some criminal sentences for nonviolent offenses and drug possession, is expected to reduce the number of people incarcerated for drug use, which officials expect will also reduce the number of mentally ill in prisons, “since drug use and mental health problems frequently coexist in a significant group” of the population.

The Governing article highlights a diversion system in Miami-centered Dade County in Florida, a post-booking alternative program that permits individuals arrested for “misdemeanor offenses and identified as having acute mental illnesses” to be transferred to mental health treatment facilities.  The results, according to the publication:

“About 80 percent of people offered the chance to participate in the program accepted it.  What was surprising was how many people stayed out of the system afterward.  An evaluation conducted soon after the program began found that recidivism rates one year out among participants who complete the program was just 20 percent.  In contrast, 72 percent of peers who did not participate in the program were back in jail within one year of their release.”

https://youtu.be/zSbFbv2Bs_0?list=PLQ9B-p5Q-YOP2OVnCPdYKLSmPkqLA2igT

Housing, Education, Poverty Among Greater Hartford Region's Challenges, Report Reveals

Of the 4,000 affordable housing units added to the 38-town Greater Hartford region over the past five years, nearly half (47 percent) have been in Hartford and New Britain – almost as many as were added in all of the other 36 towns in the region combined. That stark statistic is among the points emphasized in the second edition of Metro Hartford Progress Points, an analysis of data compiled by the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving and a coalition of community and regional organizations.  The inaugural report was released last year, and the new edition updates some of that initial data, as well as revealing new information about the region’s demographics, opportunities and challenges.

Regarding the fact that much of the housing is being developed in municipalities that face considerable economic challenges, the report notes that those 36 towns have lost over 9,000 students in local schools during the past five years, despite having school districts that perform more than 30 points higher and standardized testing than those in Hartford and New Britain.  The report indicated, for example, that for every 100 children born in the region’s outer ring suburbs (such as Glastonbury), 113 enroll in local public school five years later, as opposed to 81 who enroll in city schools and inner ring suburbs (such as Bloomfield).

The second edition of Progress Points “takes a deeper look at key issues impacting our communities and how they are connected. The report asks how we can build on our strengths and fully utilize the assets that the region has to provide access to opportunity for all,” officials explained.  Using key indicators to identify opportunities for action, the 2015 report focuses on three regional priorities: 1) Access to better schools, 2) Access to better jobs, and 3) Access to stronger neighborhoods.

Looking at five year trends, the report found that the region’s population of about 1 million people has grown by 2 percent, which translates to about 20,000 people or about 4,000 families.  Regional job growth, 3.5 percent, is on par with the state, but remains about 8,000 jobs below pre-recession levels.  The crime rate across the Greater Hartford region has been reduced by about 18 percent during the past five years, faster than the state (-16%) and national (11%) trends.

The study determined that there are more people living in poverty in the region than 10 years ago.  “Suburban communities have seen a major increase in the population living in low-to-mid-poverty neighborhoods,” the report said.   “Poverty is a regional, not an urban, problem.  Addressing poverty requires improved coordination among towns to better connect transportation and other services to increase access to opportunity.”

In education, the report also notes that about 4 percent more third-graders are reading at or above grade-level goals, a faster improvement than statewide (1.3 percent).  There has been no change in the percentage of kindergartners in the region starting school with pre-K experience.  That level, 78 percent, is the same in the region as statewide.  Focusing on declining enrollment, officials indicated that some of the region’s highest-performing school districts are seeing the greatest decrease in enrollment as a result of declining birth rates: Simsbury at 13 percent, Tolland at 16 percent, Granby at 14 percent. Avon and Glastonbury both are experiencing a decline of 8 percent.

Metro Hartford Progress Points was introduced “in order to identify and better understand the critical education, income and opportunity gaps that exist in our region. This year, we’re continuing the discussion, looking for ways to improve access to better schools, better jobs and stronger neighborhoods for everyone in the region,” officials indicated.  “Access to better jobs builds stronger neighborhoods. Stronger neighborhoods help to connect families to better schools. And better education ensures that workers are ready to take on those jobs — increasing prosperity, growth and quality of life for all.”

Regarding preparation for college, the report indicates that “almost 50 percent of all students entering community college or Connecticut state universities require remedial coursework and training, even those from high-performing districts.”  The report notes “this means paying for additional courses, which only increases student debt.” The report indicates that 70 percent of jobs in Connecticut are projected to require a post-secondary education by 2025.  To reach that level, it is estimated that an additional 4,500 people will need to earn degrees statewide per year.  Currently, 67 percent of the population in Greater Hartford has a post-secondary degree.

Partner organizations in developing the report include the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Capital Workforce Partners, Capital region Council of Governments, Metro Hartford Alliance, Hispanic Health Council, United Way of Central and Northern Connecticut, Urban League of Greater Hartford, Center for Urban and Global Studies at Trinity College, and the City of Hartford.

AARP, The Hartford Aim to Assist Low Income Seniors Become Entrepreneurs

The Hartford has committed $1.4 million to the AARP Foundation to extend the Foundation’s Back to Work 50+ initiative to help low-income older adults assess opportunities to become entrepreneurs and create microenterprises. The three-year sponsorship, which broadens The Hartford's long-standing relationship with AARP, is part of The Hartford’s national philanthropic program. Communities with HART aims to "nurture the well-being of America’s communities by inspiring new generations of business leaders, enabling underserved neighborhood business owners to achieve growth and engaging the community in neighborhood business support," highlights the program description. “We are thrilled to sponsor the Back to Work 50+ program to educate and inspire older Americans who are interested in developing their own small businesses,” said Diane Cantello, vice president of Corporate Responsibility at The Hartford. “By encouraging entrepreneurship among older Americans, this program will help foster small business growth and contribute to the vibrancy of our communities.”

“Older adults are redefining traditional approaches to work and careers,” said Lisa Marsh Ryerson, president of AARP Foundation. “While many want to continue to work or advance in their current jobs, a growing number want to generate income by using their talents and skills to start their own business or microenterprise. Through this effort, AARP Foundation stands ready to help by equipping them with the information and skills they need to achieve their goals.”

The recent announcement of this new sponsorship follows the one-year anniversary of The Hartford’s Communities with HART Program, a five-year initiative aimed at benefitting small businesses and supporting students through partnerships with the Accion U.S. Network (Accion) and Junior Achievement USA (JA).  In its first year, The Hartford announced a $1.25 million partnership with Accion to help small business owners who experience difficulty in accessing the traditional loans they need to sustain and grow their businesses. Accion manages the loan process, which focuses on community-oriented businesses in low-and-moderate income areas that hire and source locally, deliver social value and make a positive difference in their neighborhoods. With an initial focus in four key markets - Chicago, Hartford, San Antonio and San Diego – Communities with HART also provides training and web resources to help small business owners succeed.

The Hartford is also helping to inspire the next generation of small business owners as the title sponsor of the JA Company Program^®, which includes a new online blended learning model and offers students the opportunity to launch their own small business while learning the basics of entrepreneurship, financial literacy and work readiness. With the help of a $1.5 million investment, JA has already seen more than a 25 percent increase in the number of JA Company Programs being conducted since the new program was rolled out across the country at the end of last year, according to company officials.

First-Time Home Purchases Poised for Increase Nationwide; Buyers Market in Connecticut

Nearly one-in-five potential first-time home buyers nationwide are actively looking to buy and nearly two-thirds would like to provide a sizable down payment of 20 percent or more. Nearly two-thirds, 62 percent, of potential first-time home buyers think they will purchase a home within the next two years. Among millennial survey respondents, this number is slightly higher, rising to 67 percent. New research from TD Bank, with 75 locations in Connecticut, indicates that “consumers are gaining confidence in the economy and many are looking to enter the housing market within the next two years,” explained Scott Haymore, Head of Pricing and Secondary Markets, TD Bank.  The bank polled more than 1,000 Americans looking to purchase their first home within the next five years, producing the TD Bank First-Time Home Buyer Pulse report. 

Connecticut, with the strongest inventory of homes on the market in the New England region, is especially attractive to first-time home buyers, points out Maryruth Ryan, TD Bank's Regional Mortgage Sales Manager for Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and southern New Hampshire.  “Rates are at historical lows, mortgage programs are good.  It’s a good time to buy in Connecticut,” Ryan said.

The Connecticut Association of Realtors reported earlier this month that single-family house sales across Connecticut rose nearly 14 percent in June, compared with June 2014, with the median sale price dropping just under one percent.  There were 3,756 homes sold in Connecticut last month, 459 more than during the same month a year ago.

Ryan said that as the millennial generation looks to first-home purchases, they “have done their research, they are more prepared, they know what they need to do to qualify for a mortgage for their first home.”

When asked what is preventing them from purchasing their first home, respondents most often cited needing to save money for a down payment (64 percent) and needing to pay down debt (45 percent).  For millennials, the entry to homeownership is even tougher: 70 percent of millennial respondents said they need to save for a down payment and 52 percent said they need to pay down debt. Millennials are more likely to purchase their first home with a partner or spouse (70 percent) compared to potential first-time home buyers of other generations 49 percent.

"Many first-time buyers today are finding it difficult to save for a large down payment, especially young adults who are saddled with substantial student loan debt," said Haymore. “Many lenders today are offering home affordability and down payment assistance programs so it's important for these buyers and potential buyers to shop around for a mortgage and learn more about the options available to them."

The survey noted that more than two-thirds of consumers (68 percent) looking to purchase their first home are interested in move-in ready homes while one-third would like to buy a fixer-upper. And when it comes to amenities, respondents are most interested in their first home having a backyard or pool and an attractive design, followed by energy efficient / smart homes technologies.

The top four financing options first-time buyers consider include cash savings, 30-year mortgage, and an affordability program and government loan.  Ryan points out that financial institutions such as TD Bank provide consumer education about the mortgage process, discussing aspects including budgeting and affordability with prospective home buyers. "The right lender will help first-time buyers understand what they can afford and share information on the different loan options available,” Haymore added.

Some Connecticut home purchases are now including a contingency clause, Ryan indicated, something that isn’t happening at the same frequency elsewhere.  The so-called “Hubbard Clause” is a contingency in a purchase agreement that expressly conditions the buyer's offer upon their ability to sell and close on another home or property, most often their current residence.

Because of the strong inventory currently in Connecticut, rather than more than one buyer lining up to purchase a house and an ensuing bidding war, as is happening in other parts of New England and around the country, first-time home buyers here tend to be able to select the home they’d prefer, and often are the only bidder seeking to make the purchase.  The Greater Hartford Board of Realtors reported that home sales rose for the fifth consecutive month in June in the 75-town region, and that sales increased and prices dropped during the first six months of 2015, compared with a year ago.

The TD Bank First-Time Home Buyer Pulse isavailable at http://mediaroom.tdbank.com/homebuyer.  The survey was conducted by Vision Critical, June 11-16.