Policy Blog NH

A closer look at NH's senior population

New figures released today by the U.S. Census Bureau show the growth in senior citizen populations across the country in the past decade. The numbers underscore the fact that New Hampshire – and the Northeast in general – is adding older people at a faster rate than the country as a whole.

A fix for School Building Aid?

New Hampshire's School Building Aid program, which has been subject to dissection and discussion for several years, may finally be getting a makeover. But whether the latest proposal for reform goes far enough to address the program's fundamental problems is uncertain.

States may feel pain from Super Committee failure

Many folks are wondering what the fiscal fallout will be from the Congressional Super Committee's failure to reach a deal on deficit reduction earlier this week. Federal law requires a series of automatic spending cuts to follow in the absence of such a deal. And among those potentially on the receiving end are state and local governments, many of which rely on federal spending and contracts to fuel their economies. Here's a helpful graphic showing how federal spending (both defense and otherwise) is spread among the 50 states. New Hampshire, you'll notice, claims a relatively small share of that pot.

 

Watching the amendments: School funding debate takes center stage again

The Legislature this week returns to the debate over education funding, when it holds hearings on a constitutional amendment on the matter. Predicting the future of that amendment – or the future of two other similar constitutional amendments still before the Legislature – is tricky. But it’s safe to say that, if passed, all of them would fundamentally reshape the state’s long and tangled debate over education funding and would shift the grounds upon which any future education policy is based.

Revenue update: Signs of bottoming out, but little sustained growth

The fiscal year is four months old, and monthly reports on revenue collections now offer a better glimpse of the state’s future financial position. Our take? The long, multiyear slide in state revenues appears to have ended, but no clear future trend is yet apparent.

More on college students and poverty

We received a good question from a reader about our most recent post, about the way the Census overstates poverty rates in towns with lots of college students:

>>Very interesting blog -- but wouldn't your proposed solution result in undercounting poor folks who are enrolled in a community college?

A study in poverty, or how college towns skew Census data

If you had to guess which New Hampshire town has the highest poverty rate, which would you pick? Maybe the state’s major urban center, Manchester, or a struggling former milltown like Berlin or Franklin.

But would you guess that Durham, home to the University of New Hampshire, had the highest poverty rate of any community in the state?