Publisher Rob Williams talks with Saint Michael's College Center for Social Science Research's Vince Bolduc and Herb Kessel about their new "Vermont In Transition" report, conducted with support from the Council on the Future of Vermont. Their research presents some valuable insights into an emerging 21st century Vermont.

Q. How did you initially become interested in this project?

Vince: We have always had an interest in the unique social and economic position of Vermont, and over the past 30 or so years have conducted a number of studies that have been related. In 1990, for example, we did the first “Pulse of Vermont” quality of life study for the Vermont Business Roundtable, and have repeated it every 5 years since then. This particular project started last May when we were approached by Paul Costello and Sarah Waring of the Council on the Future of Vermont.  They described it as part of a larger initiative for Vermonters to come up with long-range plans for the state, so when they asked, it was hard to say no. They are a good organization, and it was a subject near and dear to our hearts.

Herb: In many respects, Vermont is quite different than much of the country. In our earlier studies on Vermont’s quality of life, these differences emerged repeatedly, and some in unexpected ways. This new study offered us the opportunity to expand well beyond issues that we had explored earlier. And indeed, Vermont’s uniqueness emerged clearly in areas such as land use planning, education and energy, topics that we had not studied before. But beyond identifying differences and similarities, the opportunity to collect, display and interpret data from a wide spectrum of areas was very appealing. We both feel strongly that public policy formation is served well when it’s based upon empirical data. We hope that our study might contribute to the public conversation about a number of significant issues and trends facing the Green Mountain State.

Q. Can you tell our readers how you approached your research as a duo?

Vince: Herb Kessel and I have done a lot of writing together, so doing a project like this didn’t necessitate a “start-from-scratch” back and forth about who would do what and how we would work together. Our disciplines (Sociology and Economics) complement each other nicely so the first step was to decide on the subject matters and chapters to be covered. To settle on those, we spent a lot of time working with Paul and Sarah about the types of things that were coming up in the citizen “listening sessions” and public forums that they had been conducting for most of the prior year. We distilled this list down and recombined topics to come up with our final 14 chapters. We then found some other experts in areas outside our ranges of expertise, and asked them to write separate chapters. Altogether, the study has nine separate authors. After getting a rough idea of the subjects, we each talked to as many experts as we could find and asked each of them what they thought the major trends were. They often recommended other experts, and so our topics and data points snowballed. By mid-summer, we were almost drowning in an avalanche of data trying to pull it together into meaningful units.  The whole project took place over a very intense 6 or 7 months.

Herb:  Having worked with Vince for many years, we have developed a high measure of trust and comfort with each other’s work, and this made the process that much easier and more enjoyable. We each realized our limitations and relied on the other (and other authors) when determining who would begin looking at specific topics. When editing each other’s work, and there was much of this, we didn’t have to worry so much about ego and hurt feelings. We are mature enough to realize that clarity of thought and nonpartisanship had to take precedence over whatever sense of ownership we might have to a particular passage or chapter. We both share a passion for clarity of thought, which meant that before the public would view any of our work, it would go through many revisions. We are also great advocates of the idea that you “write to learn,” so many hours were spent trying to get things “right.” We hope we have been successful, but we expect some of our better-informed readers will be the ultimate judge of this.

Vince and I have also developed, over many years of working together, a very efficient work schedule. Vince’s day often begins in the middle of the night, while it’s not unusual to find me working well past midnight. No time zones were needed to promote an around the clock production process. I could send passages to Vince over the Internet or raise questions at 1:30 AM and get a response back by 7:00 AM the next day.

Q. How did you settle on key trends, with so many questions and areas of research to consider?

Vince: Because we both are sort of news junkies and came to the project with an understanding of our respective fields, we started with some pretty good ideas about major trends—at least for the U.S. For example, in my field of sociology, it’s pretty obvious that the role of women, men, and the family has changed pretty dramatically in the past several decades. The only trick became documenting each of these things specifically for Vermont and then to set them in the historical, regional and national contexts. Doing this often led to the discovery of many of the ways that the state is pretty distinctive—often at the top or bottom of various national lists. On the other hand, it also reminded us of how dependent we are on regional and national trends in all areas of life; we typically reflect the larger trends, although with a Vermont twist.

Herb: Back in May of 2008, the task seemed rather daunting, to identify the major trends that were impacting life in Vermont in some many areas. At the onset, we had to narrow our focus and to try to quantify that which is measurable. We met a number of times with our sponsors from the Council on the Future of Vermont to identify broad focus areas. They had devoted many months talking with hundreds of leaders and ordinary citizens throughout the State about what they saw as the major problems facing Vermont. Agreement between the two parties was easy. You cannot understand Vermont without, for example, examining trends in the economy, population, health, crime, education, the environment, and so on. Both Vince and I brought a certain measure of professional expertise to the project that also helped us shape our response. While we began with a set of topics to examine, the exploration process often resulted in some of the earlier topics becoming integrated in broader areas of study, while other areas took a more prominent place in the analysis. For example, we ended up writing less on the creative economy because solid data was hard to find and more on special topics such as higher education in Vermont, women in the labor market, or the growth of on-farm production.   

Q. What were some of the trends that surprised you?

Vince: I was surprised at the number and range of implications of the simple facts of Vermont’s small size and ethnic homogeneity. By this I don’t just mean our “demographic whiteness” but also our homogeneity in terms of the dominance of a non-Hispanic, English language, and non-foreign born population. The small size also makes us economically very dependent on a relatively small number of economic enterprises, and this puts us in a somewhat precarious position. I was also surprised to see that the so-called “brain drain” of young well-educated people leaving was not as severe as many accounts make it seem.

Herb: Most people will find surprises as they review each chapter of the study. To some extent, the types of surprises will depend upon the reader’s level of expertise in a specific area. For example, if the reader is well versed in agriculture, they may not be surprised, as I was, to learn that about one out of every ten dairy farms today in the state is organic or that no other state has a single product that is as important to the health of agriculture as dairy is to the State of Vermont. These statistics were surprising to me as were the facts that most of our forestlands are in the hands of private, non-timber company, landowners, and that Vermont is the third most heavily forest-covered state in the nation. It was also a surprise to learn that Vermont State charted banks and credit unions were not issuing sub-prime loans and that our houses prices, while high, did not rise to the extent they did in other New England states.      

Q. What trends do you see as most hopeful for Vermont's future?

Vince: Vermont has a physically healthy population with an unusually well-educated work force, and strong social capital and public trust in each other. We do not have the social and political divisions that many states have to struggle with. Our crime rates are among the lowest in the country, and government is fairly responsive to citizens. For example, as we called people in state offices, non-profit organizations, and Vermont’s colleges and universities, people were extremely helpful in taking our calls and answering our questions. Many ran extra data at our request, and others volunteered to proofread their relevant sections to make sure we got the data right. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have tried to do this project in the state across the Lake. Our small size and slow growth rate gives us the luxury of planning and responding to the needs of the future. It’s a very “user friendly” and livable state; life still makes sense here in 100 ways it doesn’t elsewhere. I have always been proud to be from Vermont, but by the time we were done with the project, I more fully appreciated why we should all be proud of our state.

Herb: In recent years (not including the current downturn), our growth in employment has slowed considerably from the 1990’s. Yet, Vermonters have always been creative and independent, and these attributes may combine with our unique physical environment to help Vermonters find new ways of making a living. We see many signs of Vermonters starting specialized businesses (especially prominent in the food processing sectors) that will offer Vermonters opportunities to maintain and grow our standard of living.  As Vince has noted, Vermont is one of the best-educated states in the nation, and there is a strong relationship between standard of living and education.  Another hopeful trend reflects something very basic about Vermont’s quality of life. We trust our neighbors. Questions have been asked on national surveys about whether people can trust others. Trust levels have been declining nationally for many years reaching a low of around 34%, but in Vermont, people are much more likely to feel they can trust their neighbors (71%) and these survey results within Vermont have remained fairly constant for a number of years.

Q. What trends do you see as among the more challenging for Vermonters as we move forward?

Vince: Vermont’s small size will continue to be a problem in some ways, but a blessing in other ways. We are about the same size as the Worchester metropolitan area, and less than half the size of the Indianapolis metro area. Our whole state is more like a medium size city than a whole state, but we have the needs and ambitions of states 10 times our size. The small size and lack of diversity both demographically and economically makes us susceptible to economic upheaval. It is not unimaginable that a relatively small national or global shift could result in the loss of a major employer, and the damage would be great. By comparison, if that same business shut down in a larger state like New York, the local damage would be an issue, but the proportional damage to the whole state would be minimal.

Herb: Like all states, Vermont faces many challenges. I’ll just mention three that come to mind. First, higher education in Vermont, both public and private, is expensive. Grants, money that students don’t have to pay back, have not kept up with the rapidly rising cost of education. The extent to which students (and their parents) are financing their educations through loans has skyrocketed. At the same time, the percentage of high school students in Vermont going on to college has leveled off in recent years after rising significantly during the 1980’s and 1990’s. Will the high cost of college cut off opportunities for social and economic mobility? A second challenge is one of pure economics: Vermont is and will likely remain a high cost state. Vermonters expect a first rate, 21st  century infrastructure; we expect our roads and bridges to be safe and well maintained, energy to be dependable and cheap, health care to be reasonably price and accessible, and broadband universally available. But our unique geography, combined with our small population, limits the extent to which we can take advantage of economies of scale. A third challenge concerns the ability of less well-educated Vermonters to earn a middle class income. In recent years, many of the key sectors that have traditionally provided a path to middle income status for those with less education have been shrinking. Manufacturing and construction for example, now offer fewer job opportunities. We also see stagnation in some of the lower wage jobs in the state. The State does have a number of good opportunities for high wage jobs, but increasingly, these are being closed to people with less education.

Q. What do you think Vermonters will do with the information contained in this report?

Vince: That’s a good question. The first goal, I think, is to try to absorb some of the dominant trends among the 160 that we identified, and then to allow it to become part of our thinking (and re-thinking) about who we are. Then we can re-assess our strengths and weaknesses and try to move forward to address them and plan for the future. This was the prime goal of the Council on the Future of Vermont as they attempt to pull Vermonters together to chart a course into the future. If nothing else, we think this is a pretty balanced and comprehensive historical record which we hope accurately captures the dynamics of change during these last several decades at this important time of transition in our state’s history.

Herb: It’s also important to recognize that this study is being written not necessarily for experts in a particular field, but for the ordinary citizen who wants to learn more about their state or for decision makers. We hope that this document will provide Vermonters with a quantitative perspective on the key trends in Vermont, whether they be ones that are well known or not. For example, most Vermonters know that we have lost many jobs in manufacturing in the last decade, but exactly how many is less well understood. The same goes for farms. We all know that the state has lost many dairy farms, and the remaining ones are getting larger.  But how many dairy farms are left, how large have they become, and to what extent is Vermont’s experience differ from national trends? For every trend identified, we include the exact numbers, often with national and regional comparisons. A second audience for the study is one that hasn’t even been born yet. We hope that future historians will be able to use this study to understand the “state of the State” in 2008. The statistics will also provide historians with a comprehensive set of benchmark data that can be used to understand how the State has evolved since the millennium.

Q: Gentlemen, thanks for your time.