Data for Community Action

A Glance at Results from the 2012 Community Wellbeing Survey

According to data collected by DataHaven and 2012 Community Wellbeing Survey, there is much positive news to report about the Greater New Haven region. Among the high points, four out of five respondents express personal satisfaction with the city or area in which they live and report satisfaction with their job. Area residents are also a charitable people, with more than 70% giving time or donations to a local institution within the last 12 months.

Generally, residents of Greater New Haven enjoy a very high quality of life, with our Congressional District 3 ranking among the top 20% nationwide in the Measure of America's Human Development Index of health, income and human capital. However, many in our region continue to face barriers to economic security, educational achievement, health, housing, transportation, safety and other critical areas.

The data below (and future analyses of survey findings) is a first attempt by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven to identify a few of the indicators that have the greatest ability to communicate the status of our region and help identify the barriers faced by its diverse communities. We believe it can help us in our capacity as the region's permanent charitable endowment and largest grantmaker—as well as fellow funders and philanthropists, nonprofits and public agencies, and all citizens—to better understand our local community so we can work together to make it stronger, now and forever.

Why the Numbers Matter

Having Access to Good Data is Key to Driving Progress

Greater New Haven is experiencing rapid demographic change. There are more children of color under the age of 5 than white children. As the population ages, residents of color will become the majority. Since 2000, the Hispanic/Latino population has more than doubled in the innerring towns (to 18,494), and the Asian-American population has nearly doubled in the outer-ring towns (to 9,913). Results from the Community Wellbeing Survey show that, on average, all racial and ethnic groups within the City of New Haven and the Region are satisfied with where they live.

Connecticut's "Educational Achievement Gap," is the largest in the nation. Elementary school test scores are a strong predictor of graduation rates, and students who do not graduate from high school are significantly more likely to be unemployed, have low wage jobs or become incarcerated.

Greater New Haven operates as an integrated economic region, but transportation is insufficient. The typical job in the region is reachable within 90-minutes via public transit by just 25% of the working population.

High housing costs, especially rent, is a growing burden on many households. Median rents in Connecticut rose by 37% between 2001 and 2011, even though the median household income of renters rose by just 4% during the same time period. Approximately 20,000 renters in Greater New Haven pay more than 50% of their income toward housing costs each year.

Rates of chronic disease and violent crime in Greater New Haven are lower than the national average. However, in certain city neighborhoods these rates are greatly elevated. The result for those neighborhoods is high health care costs, lower individual wellbeing and reduced life expectancy.

The 2012 Community Wellbeing Survey was managed by DataHaven, and sponsored by a consortium of funders including The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, Carolyn Foundation, United Way of Greater New Haven, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Yale-New Haven Hospital, NewAlliance Foundation, and generous individual donors. The 20-minute telephone survey, conducted by the Siena Research Institute at Siena College, involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,307 randomly-selected households between September 4 and October 16, 2012. Researchers interviewed residents age 18 and over from within a group of 13 municipalities including the City of New Haven, its inner-ring (East Haven, Hamden, and West Haven), and outer-ring (Orange, Milford, North Haven, Guilford, Branford, North Branford, Madison, Woodbridge, Bethany). The data are representative of neighborhoods and diverse populations throughout Greater New Haven. At a 95% confidence level, the survey carries an overall margin of error of +/- 2.7%.

Except as noted, the information presented in the charts contained on this page are based on data from the 2012 Community Wellbeing Survey. *2011 U.S. Census, American Community Survey **2005-2010 U.S. Census, American Community Survey †State of Connecticut Department of Education

For complete and final survey results and more information about our community, please visit DataHaven at www.ctdatahaven.org/wellbeingsurvey

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