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2022 State of County Report Reveals Higher Income, More Mental Illness
By Brittany Polito,
04:04AM / Sunday, July 17, 2022
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BERKSHIRE COUNTY, Mass. — The 2022 State of the County Report shows increases in income and a decrease in unemployment but also a worsening of mental illness and family distress.

Over 100 individuals and community organizations in Berkshire County have worked over the last two years to identify indicators that track the region’s performance across eight sectors: Economy, Education, Environment, Government, Health, Housing, Social Environment, and Transportation.

Berkshire Benchmarks, which is an initiative of the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission, was tasked with identifying these sectors and then highlighting indicators within.

The report was released in May and was accompanied by an event at the Berkshire Innovation Center.  GIS, Data, and IT Manager Mark Maloy summarized the findings to the BRPC on Thursday.

"This is what I think is a really good product that (Maloy) has been working on over the last year and a half or so and is still somewhat of a work in progress on some of these items," Executive Director Thomas Matuszko said.

"But the Berkshire Benchmarks has been around for a number of years, and primarily as a data repository. So if you haven't looked at the Benchmarks, you really should because it is a one-stop shop for all the data or most of the data that you're ever going to need in a community and (Maloy) revamped that this past year, and also added another element besides data, our indicators which we intend to track over time to kind of measure change in Berkshire County."

The sectors met throughout 2020 and 2021 to narrow down a list of 300 potential indicators to 82 with 32 designated as key indicators.  A survey was distributed in January that generated over 3000 responses.

Maloy said to keep in mind that it takes several years for data to be released at a county or municipal level, meaning that the information in the report is the latest data available as of April and many of the data sets do not reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Berkshire Benchmarks will measure how the pandemic impacted the region and how it recovers as more data is released.

The report showed that Berkshire County has seen a 27 percent increase in median household income since 2010.  The 2020 median household income for the county is a little over $62,000, while it is over $84,000 for the state.

"The state and the nation continue to be above the county so we have some catching up to do, but we are improving," Maloy said,

"Our incomes were relatively stable through 2015 but have since started going up and so that's good news for the region."

The county’s unemployment rate dropped from 2010 to 2019 and then predictably spiked in 2020 due to the pandemic.  The region’s unemployment rate was 9.1 percent in 2020 and dropped down to 6.5 percent in 2021.

"We know that March 2020 rates have continued to drop to 4.9, further dropping in April down to, I think, around 4.5," Maloy added.

"We're still above the 2019 rate of 3.7 but we're rapidly approaching it and hopefully by the end of the year we will reach it."

With the increase in income also came a decrease in poverty.  The county’s rate dropped four percent between 2013 and 2020.  According to local social service organizations, that number has since gone up during the pandemic.

The metrics for 2021 show that county residents have worsening mental health and more family distress.  Berkshire County’s rate for mentally unhealthy days has increased from 3.4 days in 2013 to 5 days.  There were over 1,100 retraining orders in 2021, representing a 21 percent increase since 2015.

The number of opioid-related deaths has increased significantly, from four in 2010 to 56 in 2020.

Maloy said that housing is one area where the indicators don’t reflect the county’s current situation, as it showed a surplus of low-income housing units and a deficit of moderate middle-income housing.

Since the pandemic began, housing prices have skyrocketed and there is now believed to be a shortage of low, moderate, and middle-income range housing as well as issues in housing quality.

The report also showed disparities in race and ethnicity when it comes to household income and poverty rates.  White residents have seen a 27 percent increase in income from 2010 to 2020 while black residents have seen a 13 percent decrease before inflation adjustments.

The Berkshire NAACP’s report on redlining supports these findings, Maloy said, which shows that 72.5 percent of white families own homes while only 28.5 percent of black families do.

Windsor Delegate Doug McNally reacted to the findings that showed children struggling academically after the onset of the pandemic.  Third-grade English proficiency rates dropped four percent between 2019 and 2021 and eighth-grade math proficiency rates dropped 18.4 percent between 2018 and 2021.

"My concern is that the whole COVID thing has severely damaged the early childhood education community in Berkshire County," McNally said.

"We've lost a lot of early childhood programs, young families are having trouble finding quality early childhood education, so I think that we as a planning commission really have to take a deep dive into how that’s going to be corrected."

Sheffield Alternate Rene Wood was appreciative of the effort.

"I think it's really an overwhelming effort that you have presented to us tonight," she said, adding that the data will make her job in writing grants much easier.

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