Fiscal 50 Kicks Off Its Second Decade With a Big Update

Welcome to the new Fiscal 50. Longtime users will notice a wide range of changes in both the substance of Fiscal 50 content and how it is presented, including:

• State pages that help you keep track of trends in your home state and provide national and regional context.
• Interactive indicator pages with highly customizable and shareable data visualizations.
• A Budget Threads feature that offers The Pew Charitable Trusts’ read on the latest state fiscal news.

Pew is launching new state pages that tailor our traditional 50-state comparisons to elevate the data and insights that will be most relevant to users from each state. We hope that you’ll bookmark your state’s page and return often for up-to-date information about its performance on Fiscal 50’s signature indicators, adoption of Pew-recommended fiscal policy tools, and specific findings from recent Pew research and analysis. Throughout the platform, users will notice new regional views and benchmarks that allow them to easily understand regional trends and compare their states with their neighbors.

Our newly redesigned indicator pages offer analysis of 50-state performance and recent trends, walk you through why each indicator matters, and explain relevant on-the-ground developments. Highly customizable interactive data visualizations anchor these pages and include captions and other text that respond to your selections. For example, if you ask for a view with trend lines that highlight the capacity of rainy-day funds in Kansas, Michigan, and New Jersey over time, a detailed caption will appear explaining key takeaways for each of those states and providing national context. We encourage you to download and share these customized views and the data that powers them.

We have modified and extended the functionality of many of our long-time indicators to incorporate new data and policy-relevant insights. Our population indicator, for example, now includes projections, provides more granular details on trend drivers, and breaks down the data by age group.

Notably, with many of the indicators we’ve moved away from a focus on point-to-point comparisons that measure from a Great Recession or pre-pandemic baseline—and toward an emphasis on putting recent developments in the context of long-term trends. As a result of these and other changes, please use caution and read the fine print in the “Notes” and “Sources and Methodology” sections for each indicator before making comparisons to previously published Fiscal 50 data.

Users will also notice a renewed focus throughout the new platform on real-time developments in and around statehouses across the country, and their connections to fiscal policy. We’re bringing Fiscal 50’s signature blend of public policy research and analysis, data visualization, and journalistic storytelling to a new Budget Threads feature, which will bring together relevant expertise from across Pew. Through regular reporting and analysis, we’ll explore unfolding developments in the states, their big-picture fiscal implications, and connections to related research.

We are eager to hear what you think about the new Fiscal 50. Please feel free to reach out with feedback or questions.

Melissa Maynard oversees The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Fiscal 50 project.