The Pew Charitable Trust’s Fiscal 50 has, for some time, been a go-to place for data, research and analysis about some of the most significant indicators of states’ fiscal health. 

Information has included fiscal balance; tax revenue trends; federal share of state revenues; reserves and balances; long-term liabilities; state Medicaid spending; tax revenue volatility and population changes.

And now, after a decade of providing a valuable resource, Pew has reinvigorated and expanded its offerings. 

As Graphicacy, Pew’s partner in the redesign, explained in a recent blog post, the site now has “state-specific pages that combine data and research insights from Pew’s fiscal teams. The pages display the performance of eight key indicators for each state, and every indicator has an interactive dot plot, which can be expanded to show more detailed information.”

As Melissa Maynard, Fiscal 50's project director, told us. "Outside of a relatively limited universe of policy experts, most people come to these issues with their state as the lens and national and regional benchmarks as essential context. Our new state pages dive directly into what Pew's data and analysis means from each state's vantage point."

What’s more, each of the indicators has evolved. Even the seemingly simplest, the population indicator, has grown in scope and depth. The Fiscal 50 now explores the drivers of population change and projections by age group, which can be policy-relevant in many different contexts.

We reached out to Barbara Rosewicz, project director of Fiscal 50 from its founding until her retirement from Pew in 2022, to get her take on the changes. She was particularly effusive about the addition of the individual state pages and told us that “you can learn a surprising amount by comparing your state’s progress to others, including how well positioned it is in the event of an economic downturn.”

Rosewicz went on to comment that “One of the characteristics I’m pleased to see continued in the new Fiscal 50 is its commitment to combining data visualizations with written analysis, so that readers can easily grasp what’s important in the latest bar charts or trend lines. I know how much work it takes behind the scenes to present comparable and reliable data for all 50 states, pull out insights that aren’t visible in a dizzying spreadsheet of numbers, and then lay out the findings in a way that a reader shouldn’t have to knit a brow to understand. I hope users understand that Fiscal 50 doesn’t just plaster up the latest data online but – especially valuable in this age of media distrust – is vetting data and double- and triple-checking its calculations and analysis before publication.”

Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 22nd, at 2:00 ET, Pew is hosting a webinar to delve deeply into this significant work. You can register for it by clicking here. 

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