The Foundation for MetroWest on Wednesday released a website dubbed Impact MetroWest that paints a data-driven picture of the realities and challenges facing Wellesley and 32 other cities and towns.

The philanthropic outfit’s new site features charts and tables, as well as context, about issues affecting the region’s 3 million residents that range from foreign-born population to financial security to female-to-male earnings ratio. A summary of key trends from Foundation for MetroWest partner Center for Governmental Research is embedded at the bottom of this post.

Many themes are familiar: housing shortages, transportation troubles (average travel time to work for Wellesley-ites has risen from 24 to 30 minutes since 2000), and a generally healthy jobs picture. You can drill down into some of the data on a town or city basis, while other numbers don’t go deeper than county-wide. I took a very quick spin through the site, which revealed this data:

Under Financial Security (People Living in Poverty), Wellesley’s percentage of people living in poverty has stayed in the 3%-4% range since 2000. That’s lower than the 5%-7% range in Norfolk County over that period.
The percentage of disengaged youths (ages 16 to 19 not in school or without jobs) shows as 0% for Wellesley, below the county’s 2% figure. Wellesley’s opioid-related deaths per 100,000 residents was 3.4 in 2018, well below Norfolk County’s 24.1 and the state’s 29.5.
Foreign-born population in MetroWest is on the rise, and totaled 18% from 2014-2018. In Wellesley, the percentage of residents who were not U.S. citizens at birth has climbed from 11% in 2000 to 16% (that’s 4,636 people).

I’ll take a closer look at the data later on. If you dive in and find anything worth exploring in more detail, feel free to let us know: theswellesleyreport@gmail.com

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