(courtesy image/used under Creative Commons license) Officially, Michigan’s state government is spending $48.2 billion this year on education, health care, prisons, transportation and all other spending programs. But the state actually is shelling out $78.9 billion — 64 percent more than the spending allocated through the state budget. It’s happening through something called “tax expenditures”—tax […]
Michigan League for Public Policy
Posted inQuality of Life
Region struggles with sick economy, sick families
(Bridge illustration/Howard Davy) When Dr. Marion Hautea looks out at the waiting room at Thunder Bay Community Health Service in Rogers City, he sees diabetes. He sees hypertension. He sees abscessed teeth and coronary disease. Mostly, though, he sees jobs. Jobs that have left Northeast Michigan, burdening the region with the highest unemployment rate […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Report details surge in child poverty in Detroit
The majority of children in Detroit now live in poverty, says a new report from the demographic firm Data Driven Detroit. The child poverty rate was 57.3 percent in 2011, D3 found in “2012 State of the Detroit Child”, after a decade of huge increases in economic struggles for children in Michigan’s largest city. “The […]
Posted inMichigan Government
Welfare changes have saved state money; fate of ex-recipients unclear
The number of Michigan families getting welfare checks from the state plummeted to the lowest level in more than 40 years just nine months after welfare reform was implemented. Twelve months in, the state is spending nearly $18 million a month less on cash assistance, the cumulative result of reform and an improving economy. Those […]
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