Educating Connecticut’s future work force and investment in roads, bridges and other infrastructure are more effective at creating jobs than doling out job-creation tax breaks to corporations, a Massachusetts researcher says.
University of Massachusetts professor Jeffrey Thompson says his study provides evidence that state funds invested in education attracts business to the state. Moreover, it raises gross state product and personal income, and increases employment in metropolitan areas.
Thompson’s position with UMass’ Political Economy Research Institute is partly funded by Connecticut Voices for Children, a group that advocates greater financial and policy support for education in the region.
The group did not influence the study findings yet embraced it as a clarion call to Connecticut budget- and policymakers to explore fresh options for closing the state’s budget deficit and to boost economic development.
“The evidence in this study highlights the opportunities Connecticut has available to grow jobs in the state, as well as the risks to our economy posed by severe budget cuts,” Connecticut Voices research analyst Joachim Hero said in a statement accompanying a press release about the study.
Thompson’s study, Prioritizing Approaches to Economic Development in New England, infrastructure investment often brings in matching federal funds, which lowers the projects’ overall cost to taxpayers while stimulating employment.
According to the report, a major disadvantage of corporate tax incentives and subsidies is that they deplete resources that could be spent on the education and infrastructure investments that do create jobs and economic growth.
“In the short-term, as well as over the long-run,” Thompson said in a statement, “the best policymakers can do to create jobs and generate economic growth is to make the state’s economy more productive by investing in infrastructure and education.”
The full study can be downloaded at www.peri.umass.edu.
