What is New Hampshire?

The Carsey School of Public Policy is pleased to welcome you to What is New Hampshire?. What is New Hampshire? was originally an annual publication of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies. When CPPS, unfortunately, ceased operations in 2018, it handed off this publication to the Carsey School.

The purpose of What is New Hampshire? is to set a factual baseline of understanding as the state makes decisions about its future. It is not meant to prove any particular points, or to support any particular opinions regarding the choices to be made by the state’s governments, people or businesses. It is a set of facts and simple descriptive text describing where we are, where we have been, and what challenges we may face based on our analysis. It is our hope that by starting from a common factual premise, discussion in the state will be elevated and the decisions will be made on the basis of a deeper understanding of the underlying facts as we build a sustainable future for our state.

The CPPS version of What is New Hampshire?, last published in 2018, was an excellent and highly useful publication. The move to the Carsey School, however, offers us an opportunity to take a fresh look and to make some changes. While there are some different data sources and historical comparison periods employed in this version, the biggest change is that What is New Hampshire? has moved largely online. As a result:

Graphics are interactive—allowing users who wish for deeper dives to see data in different ways while not bogging down the presentation for users who do not.
There will be no single date when the entire publication is released. Updates and new sections will be added periodically.

To start with, we have three sections available: Economy, Demography, and Government Budgets.

If you have any suggestions for how to improve What is New Hampshire? please let us know by emailing Carsey.WINH@unh.edu.