Current
News & Issues
Revised Per Capita Personal Income
by State, FY 2003-2005
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
(BEA) recently released revised estimates of state personal income
from 2003-2005. According to BEA's data, the U.S. as a whole showed
an increase of 9.64 percent in per capita personal income over the
three years. Twenty-seven states experienced per capita personal income
growth greater than the national average. The District of Columbia
ranks first at 15.66 percent, followed by Wyoming (13.96 percent),
Hawaii (13.81 percent), Oklahoma (13.21 percent), Nevada (12.61 percent),
Alabama (12.46 percent), Florida (12.38 percent), New Mexico (12.33
percent), Maryland (12.18 percent) and Idaho (12.01 percent).SSTI's
table ranking all 50 states and the District of Columbia by revised
per capita personal income from 2003-2005 is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/100206t.htm
Telemarketing
Fraud and Internet Scams Increasing
The
number of fraud victims increased in 2005, as reported in a 2006 National
Consumers League (NCL) Bulletin. Increases have occurred in Internet
fraud regarding wire transfers of money and in Internet scams such
as Nigerian money offers. The average loss to telemarketing fraud
rose from $1,974 in 2004 to $2,892 last year and Internet fraud more
then doubled, from an average of $895 in 2004 to $1,917 in 2005. The
number of telemarketing scams reported rose by 39 percent, Internet
fraud reports by 12 percent. Another Internet scam on the rise is
bogus offers of scholarships and grants from the government. For more
information, visit Fraud.org
or e-mail info@nclnet.org.
The
Marriage Calculator
The
Department of Health and Human Services has developed The
Marriage Calculator. The Web-based tool can calculate the "cost
of marriage" for a specific couple in a specific State - how welfare
programs and tax policies might interact to create penalties and/or
incentives and how they differ across States and across different
income and family structures. The Urban Institute, under contract
to ACF, developed this new Web-based tool