In a July 20th article (“Aging population to worsen CT’s budget woes”), Hartford Business Journal Managing Editor Brad Kane described the fiscal challenges that the graying of Connecticut’s residents poses to the long-term financial health of our state. While his description of the challenge posed by an aging population is sound, his subsequent policy recommendations […]
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In a July 20th article (“Aging population to worsen CT's budget woes”), Hartford Business Journal Managing Editor Brad Kane described the fiscal challenges that the graying of Connecticut's residents poses to the long-term financial health of our state. While his description of the challenge posed by an aging population is sound, his subsequent policy recommendations suffer from the failure to account for another ongoing demographic shift that has dramatic implications for the economic future of our state: The growing diversity of our children and youth and, by extension, of our emerging workforce.
As Kane describes, an aging population will require more funds diverted to pension costs and healthcare expenses, as well as increased demand on transportation, housing, food assistance and more. This very real dynamic, alongside a shrinking workforce, makes it imperative that the state invest strategically to ensure that every young person raised in our state remains here and enters the workforce with the skills necessary to contribute to the health of the economy.
Indeed it's this investment imperative, rather than any “spending problem” that defines the true challenge facing our state. Connecticut needs to adopt a new investment strategy, one which considers both short-and long-term returns. This can be hard in state government when the election cycle is far shorter than the investment cycle. By limiting investments to those with short-term return, however, the state risks undermining our long-term success. Public investment in children today can grow our domestic workforce and increase productivity to meet the fiscal challenges of our aging population tomorrow. Rather than cut spending, we need to reconsider resource allocation and the timeline for effective investment.
Consider for example the underinvestment in public education. While the state Education Cost Sharing grant (ECS) was designed to equalize school funding, failures in both funding and distribution have limited the educational resources available in many towns and cities.
Districts with low property wealth are unable to raise revenue through property taxes to equalize municipal spending in education, leaving schools serving students in need with insufficient resources to provide a high-quality education. As such, many school districts in our poorest communities are doubly disadvantaged by the level of school funding and the extra challenges they face in supporting children living in poverty. The disparities in funding for our schools lead to disparities in the quality of education children receive. The disparities in the quality of education children receive leads to disparities in workforce preparation and long-term wage earning capacity.
The state can't afford to take a one-sided or short-sighted approach to the budget. Connecticut Voices for Children calls on the state to make smarter fiscal decisions by allocating more resources to our greatest asset: our children. Sustaining and growing public investment in children will pay Connecticut greater dividends than today's inadequate contribution in our future workforce.
Ellen Shemitz is executive director of Connecticut Voices for Children (www.ctvoices.org).
