For nearly 20 years, the print editions of The New England Journal of Higher Education (and its predecessor Connection) published a quarterly collection of facts and figures called "Data Connection."

It was a sort of ripoff of the underrated Harper's Index. The key was to cleverly juxtapose pieces of interesting data, with no expressed overarching context. ...]]>

For nearly 20 years, the print editions of The New England Journal of Higher Education (and its predecessor Connection) published a quarterly collection of facts and figures called "Data Connection."

It was a sort of ripoff of the underrated Harper's Index. The key was to cleverly juxtapose pieces of interesting data, with no expressed overarching context. The glue, in our case, was that the items focused on the range of issues that have made up NEBHE's bailiwick, namely higher education, economic development, demography and quality of life—New Englandness if you will.

The web has added freedom to our ability to publish information more frequently and with more detail. But the clipped and connected nature of Data Connection still warrants a place, so here goes ...

Number of registered users for U.S. Army’s recruiting game, America’s Army: 9,700,000 Frontline

Number of people in the real U.S. military, all branches, including reserves: 2,300,000 Wikipedia

Percentage of students whose score on the ASVAB: the Armed Forces Qualification Test between 2004 and 2009 made them ineligible to enlist in the Army: 23% Shut out of the Military, The Education Trust

Number of Peace Corps volunteers in Greater Boston: 212 Peace Corps

Rank of Greater Boston among metropolitan areas with the highest number of Peace Corps volunteers: 5 Peace Corps

Number of attorneys in the 200-member Massachusetts Legislature: 52 Boston Bar Association

Number before the 2010 election: 65 Boston Bar Association

Number of people below poverty rate who lived in New England suburbs in 2008: 675,000 The Brookings Institution

Number who lived in New England's big cities: 330,000 The Brookings Institution

Percentage-point increase in probability of admission among applicants with a family connection or "legacy" at 30 highly selective colleges: 23 Harvard Graduate School of Education

Increase in probability if the connection was a parent: 45 Harvard Graduate School of Education

Employed wives brought home 47% of their family's total earnings in 2009, up from 45% in 2008, according to a new report by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

That “marks the largest single-year increase in 15 years,” according to the report Wives as Breadwinners: Wives’ Share of Family Earnings Hits Historic High ...]]>

Employed wives brought home 47% of their family's total earnings in 2009, up from 45% in 2008, according to a new report by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

That “marks the largest single-year increase in 15 years,” according to the report Wives as Breadwinners: Wives’ Share of Family Earnings Hits Historic High during the Second Year of the Great Recession.

The report's author Kristin Smith notes that the increase is not a sign of less wage disparity between men and women, but a disproportionate increase in the unemployment rate among males.  The median salary for women actually fell from $31,041 in 2007 to $30,000 in 2009.  The unemployment rate for husbands in these families jumped from 3% in 2007 to 7% in 2009.

Smith's earlier study noted that as the husband’s level of education increases, the wife’s proportional contribution decreases.  In families where a husband had less than a high school education, her contribution was 52%. When he had a college degree, her contribution was 40%.

In February 2010, The New England Journal of Higher Education published a study, Failure to Launch, by Lane A. Glen and Suzanne Van Wert.  This study shows that the achievement gaps between males and females is getting worse and that 80% of high school dropouts now are males.  Combining these two studies suggests that the importance of the wife as the “breadwinner” in a family will continue to grow in the future.