Michael Malone's List: WPC

• Jan. 2011 cost of living index in Norton: 131.3 (high, U.S. average is 100)
• High school or higher: 89.2
• Unemployed: 12.2%
• Now married: 61.8%

• Single-family new house construction building permits:

   
  • 1996: 102 buildings, average cost: $89,000
   
  • 1997: 82 buildings, average cost: $110,200
   
  • 1998: 88 buildings, average cost: $138,900
   
  • 1999: 153 buildings, average cost: $135,600
   
  • 2000: 85 buildings, average cost: $158,900
   
  • 2001: 42 buildings, average cost: $155,300
   
  • 2002: 167 buildings, average cost: $140,300
   
  • 2003: 93 buildings, average cost: $167,200
   
  • 2004: 79 buildings, average cost: $195,300
   
  • 2005: 89 buildings, average cost: $226,300
   
  • 2006: 57 buildings, average cost: $207,800
   
  • 2007: 57 buildings, average cost: $214,800
   
  • 2008: 34 buildings, average cost: $216,000
   
  • 2009: 16 buildings, average cost: $206,200
   
  • 2010: 21 buildings, average cost: $231,900
• 0

  3

  6

  9

  12

  15

  Construction

  Educational
• Professional, scientific, and technical services
• Construction (12%)

6 more annotations...

• Median per capita income in 2009 ($)
• 0

  8,000

  16,000

  24,000

  32,000

  40,000

  All

  White

  Black or African American

  Asian

  Hispanic or Latino

  American Indian and Alaska Native

  Multirace

  Other
• 2

  36

  74

  112

  150

  All

  White

  Black
• Number of households with income > $10k:

  Norton:	6.2% (368)
  State:	5.2% (129,367)

   

  Number of households with income > $15k:

  Norton:	5.1% (301)
  State:	4.2% (104,530)

   

  Number of households with income > $20k:

  Norton:	4.8% (286)
  State:	4.1% (102,182)

   

  Number of households with income > $25k:

  Norton:	4.4% (259)
  State:	3.8% (93,674)

   

  Number of households with income > $30k:

  Norton:	4.5% (265)
  State:	4.1% (100,631)

   

  Number of households with income > $35k:

  Norton:	4.2% (251)
  Massachusetts:	3.9% (97,137)

   

  Number of households with income > $40k:

  Norton:	4.3% (255)
  Massachusetts:	4.1% (100,661)

   

  Number of households with income > $45k:

  Norton:	3.9% (232)
  State:	3.8% (94,516)

   

  Number of households with income > $50k:

  Norton:	8.2% (486)
  State:	7.0% (172,990)

   

  Number of households with income > $60k:

  Norton:	10.0% (592)
  State:	10.1% (250,046)

   
• Change in median household income between 2000 and 2009:: -72.9%
   

  Norton, Massachusetts:	-72.9%
  State:	-97.4%

3 more annotations...

• Compared with children in the control groups, children in the music groups exhibited greater  increases in full-scale IQ.
• The focus of the present report is on a separate line of research, which examines whether music lessons have collateral benefits  that extend to nonmusical areas of cognition.
• Music lessons involve long periods of focused attention, daily practice, reading musical notation,  memorization of extended musical passages, learning about a variety of musical structures (e.g., intervals, scales, chords,  chord progressions), and progressive mastery of technical (i.e., fine-motor) skills and the conventions governing the expression  of emotions in performance.
• This combination of experiences could have a positive impact on cognition, particularly during  the childhood years, when brain development is highly plastic and sensitive to environmental influence
• Indeed, correlational and quasi-experimental studies reveal that music lessons have positive associations with verbal memory  (Ho, Cheung, & Chan, 2003), spatial ability (for review, see Hetland, 2000a), reading ability (Hurwitz, Wolff, Bortnick, & Kokas, 1975), selective attention (Hurwitz et al., 1975), and mathematics achievement (Cheek & Smith, 1999).
• Put simply, children with high IQs are more likely than other children to take music lessons  because better educated and more affluent parents tend to provide music lessons for their children (Orsmond & Miller, 1999).

4 more annotations...

• E. Glenn Schellenberg
• Music lessons  in childhood tell a different story. They are associated with small but general and long-lasting intellectual benefits that  cannot be attributed to obvious confounding variables such as family income and parents' education.
• My finding of broad intellectual  benefits of music lessons is also consistent with the literature as a whole (Schellenberg, in press), which includes reports of positive associations between music lessons and reading, mathematical, verbal, and spatial abilities.
• The number of months of music lessons had  a modest but positive association with each outcome variable that remained reliable when family income, parents' education,  and involvement in nonmusical activities were held constant. Once again, the effects were broad, extending across the four  index scores and the different areas of academic achievement (math, spelling, reading) but not to social skills
• These correlational findings extend  those of the experimental study by showing that real-world effects of musical training on intellectual abilities are (a) larger  with longer periods of training, (b) long lasting, (c) not attributable to obvious confounding variables, and (d) distinct  from those of nonmusical out-of-school activities.
• Does music make you smarter? The answer is a qualified yes.
• Music listening and music lessons can lead to short-term and long-term  cognitive benefits, respectively.
• The mechanisms driving the intellectual benefits of music lessons remain more obscure.
• Nonetheless, music lessons might be special in this regard  because (a) they are a school-like activity that many children enjoy, (b) multiple skills are trained in music lessons, (c)  music is a domain that improves abstract reasoning, or (d) acquiring musical knowledge is similar to acquiring a second language.

7 more annotations...