Maine in top third of states for prosperity, report says

(The Center Square) – Maine is the 16th-most prosperous state in the nation and ranked No. 1 in the country for safety and security, according to the latest United States Prosperity Index.

The index is compiled by the London-based think-tank Legatum Institute and ranks the U.S., the 50 states and the District of Columbia on 11 measurements. Forty authors compiled the rankings into an annual report. Maine ranked 16th overall in the 2021 report and ranked 15th in the 2020 and 2011 reports.

“Maine ranks first for safety and security as a result of performing well across all three elements,” said Shaun Flanagan, director of impact and partnerships at the Legatum Institute and lead author of the report. “Although it has fallen from first to eighth for mass killings and injuries, as a result of a rise in deaths and injuries from mass shootings-like many other states and something we highlight in the report- it has seen an improvement in violent crime and property crime, although rates of identity theft have increased nearly 17-fold over the past 10 years.”

Maine ranked last in infrastructure because of its performance in the three elements that comprise the measurement: communications, resources and transport.

“This is an area of necessary attention for the state,” Flanagan said. “The state has one of the lowest accessibility rates for ultra-fast internet and electricity outages occur with more frequency and last for longer than in nearly all other states. The quality of roads and bridges is poorer than in most other states too.”

Maine did well in governance and natural environment, coming in eight for both of those measurements.

The U.S. is ranked 18 among 167 nations, according to the report. The country was performing well over the past 10 years but the pandemic stalled the growth, the authors wrote. Economic quality was particularly hard hit.

“Prosperity was weakened as restaurants, bars and non-essential retail closed,” the authors wrote in the report. “Shutting down certain parts of the U.S. economy resulted in 20 million non-farm workers losing their jobs. As a result of this action, unemployment spiked sharply upwards, from just over 4 percent in March 2020 to over 14 percent in April 2020.”

However, the authors are hopeful the economy will recover, due in part to an increase in new business applications.

“The early stages of the pandemic saw a fall in the number of new businesses applications, with an initial sharp decline from late March through May 2020,” the authors wrote. “However, there was a resurgence in applications in June 2020, which continued through to May 2021. As a result, new business applications in 2020 were 20% higher than in 2019 and this was the highest annual figure since records began in 2004.”

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