Every number on this site, verified before it’s published.
This page is the receipt. Every claim 603 Circle publishes carries a data year and a primary-source citation, checked against the original document before it appears anywhere on this site. Below: the citation gate, the three economic ledgers, and the data New Hampshire doesn’t have.
Last verification: June 12, 2026 · Next scheduled review: September 2026The good numbers are true. So are these.
New Hampshire earns its rankings — top-ten income, low unemployment, one of the “best states to raise a family.” Those rankings are averages, and averages hide the third of the state living beneath them. This page exists for the hidden numbers.
- Best state in the nation for child well-being — Annie E. Casey Foundation, KIDS COUNT Data Book, 2024
- Worst in the nation for youth depression — 22% of NH kids ages 12–17 had a major depressive episode in the past year. State of the Nation Project, 2026 (NSDUH data)
Both numbers are technically true. They cannot both be the story. The ranking is an average of 16 indicators, lifted by New Hampshire’s wealth. The depression number measures one thing, directly: how the kids are actually doing. Averages make the headlines. Direct measures get buried — so we publish them, with sources.
It is not one fluke. It is a pattern. The same gap repeats wherever you check — the claim on the surface, the data underneath.
“#7 in the nation for household income.”
What the data shows35% of households — about 199,700 — can’t afford the basics in their own county.
U.S. Census ACS · United For ALICE 2026 Report (2024 data)“The low-tax New Hampshire Advantage.”
What the data shows4th-highest property taxes in the nation — and the lowest-income households pay roughly 3× the share of income the wealthiest pay.
ITEP, “Who Pays,” 2024“One of the best states to raise a family.”
What the data shows51st in state-level early-childhood resources. No state-funded pre-K. $28,340 a year for center care for an infant and a 4-year-old. A median home at 5.5× the median income. The worst youth-depression rate in the nation. That is not an appealing place to bring a family.
NEA Rankings & Estimates 2024 · BIA Blueprint NH 2030 · NHFPI, Oct 2025 · State of the Nation Project, 2026“A strong economy with record-low unemployment.”
What the data showsNearly 3 in 4 NH business leaders say the lack of qualified workers is hindering their growth.
BIA / Saint Anselm College survey, fall 2025This is not a gotcha. It is accountability. The people who vote, hire, raise kids, and build here deserve the whole ledger — not just the half that ranks well. And if you are thinking “I’m not ALICE, this isn’t my problem” — keep reading. The bill reaches every employer, every property-tax payer, and every cash register in the state. Three ledgers below prove it.
The federal poverty level. Not a small apartment and an old car — in New Hampshire, poverty means a family being destroyed: unable to reliably feed, house, or care for its children. 6% of NH households.
Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed: working and housed — the school aide, the EMT, the line cook — earning too much for most aid and too little for the real cost of housing, childcare, food, transportation, and health care in their county. Add a disability and a single-parent household, and ALICE is nearly impossible to survive. 29% of NH households.
Together: 35% of New Hampshire — about 200,000 households. The third of the state the rankings average away.
One-third of the state cannot support the businesses here — and that should concern every business owner in a state where 99% of businesses are small businesses. That is the 603 Circle.
Small-business share: SBA Office of Advocacy, New Hampshire Small Business Profile
How does the #7-income state produce 199,700 households that can’t afford the basics?
Not low wages alone. New Hampshire’s model keeps state taxes low by pushing the cost of the basics — childcare, housing, special education, survival itself — onto the households least able to absorb it, then cutting support off in cliffs. Each cause below is documented. Ask your ranking why it never mentioned them.
The median NH home now costs 5.5× the median household income. Mortgage costs are up 106% since 2015; incomes are up 10.3%. Over half of NH renters are cost-burdened. High income doesn’t help when the basics inflate faster.
NHFPI, “Affordability Eroded,” Oct 2025 · NH Housing, 2024Center care for an infant and a 4-year-old averaged $28,340/yr in 2023. NH ranks 51st in state-level resources for early childhood education, with no state-funded pre-K. Families lose $114–177.9M a year in earnings to the shortage.
BIA Blueprint NH 2030 (2023 data) · NEA Rankings & Estimates 2024 · NHFPI 2025Earn one dollar past $95,284 and a single parent of two loses the entire Child Care Scholarship — $15,000–20,000 a year, gone. The state built a system where a raise can be a pay cut. Details below.
NH DHHS, Child Care Scholarship program rules, SFY2025Local property taxpayers cover 83.35% of special education costs — $815M+ in FY2024 — while the lowest-income NH households pay roughly 3× the share of income in property taxes as the wealthiest. The state ranking stays low-tax; the bill still arrives.
NH School Funding Fairness Project, FY2024 · ITEP “Who Pays,” 2024This is the answer to the paradox. The rankings measure what the average household earns. They do not measure what the basics cost, where the support ends, or who the bill lands on. 603 Circle publishes the numbers underneath — every one sourced, every one below.
The Citation Gate
Every core claim on this site is checked against primary sources before it publishes — the figure, the data year, and the original document. These are the five claims at the center of the brief.
| Claim | Figure & source | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 35% of NH households below the ALICE ThresholdThe central finding | 35% of 570,689 NH households (6% poverty + 29% ALICE). Data year: 2024 ACS. United For ALICE 2026 Report — unitedforalice.org | Verified |
| NH ranks worst in the nation for youth depressionChildren & families | 51st of 51. 22% of NH youth ages 12–17 reported a major depressive episode in the past year (NSDUH data). State of the Nation Project, State of the States 2026 — stateofnation.org | Verified |
| NH employers can’t find the qualified workers they needWorkforce | Nearly 3 in 4 NH business leaders say a lack of qualified workers is hindering their ability to grow. BIA / Saint Anselm College NH Business Leader Survey, fall 2025 — biaofnh.com | Verified |
| $815M+ in special education costs absorbed locallyProperty taxpayers | Local share 83.35% of $915M total IEP-related revenue; state + federal cover 16.65%. FY2024. NH School Funding Fairness Project, June 2025 — fairfundingnh.org | Verified |
| NHFPI childcare economic impactThree ranges | Business losses $35.6–55.5M/yr · family earnings $114–177.9M/yr · state/local tax losses $9.0–14.1M/yr. 2023 data. NHFPI, “The Economic Impact of the Granite State’s Child Care Shortage,” 2025 — nhfpi.org | Verified |
Verified June 2026 against primary documents only — no news articles, no secondary summaries. That is the standard every figure on this site must meet before it appears.
New Hampshire’s three economic ledgers
Separate, not additive. These three ledgers measure partially overlapping costs borne by the same employers, taxpayers, and households — so you will not find a grand total here. Anyone who hands you one number is double-counting.
- Childcare-related productivity losses — absenteeism, reduced hours, turnover from childcare failure.NHFPI, 2025 brief (2023 data) · nhfpi.org
- 68% of NH business leaders say the childcare shortage makes it difficult to attract and retain employees.BIA / Saint Anselm College, 2024 NH Business Leader Survey
- Caregiver turnover costs are not included — no NH-specific primary source exists yet.
- $815M+ in special education costs absorbed by local property taxpayers — 83.35% of all IEP-related spending. Concord and Washington cover 16.65%.NH School Funding Fairness Project, FY2024 · fairfundingnh.org
- $9.0–14.1M in lost state & local tax revenue — workers held out of the labor force by the childcare shortage.NHFPI, 2025 brief (2023 data)
- Suppressed local discretionary spending — 199,741 below-ALICE households × $14,096 average Northeast discretionary spending. Conservative scenario assumes 25% retained.BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey Table 1800, Northeast 2023 · United For ALICE 2026 Report (2024 ACS)
- $114–177.9M in family earnings lost to the childcare shortage — context only: this is one mechanism that produces the spending hole, not an addition to it.NHFPI, 2025 brief (2023 data)
No grand total — by design. These ledgers overlap, and we refuse to double-count. Every figure above is conservative, independently sourced, year-labeled, and verified before publication.
One hand gives while the other takes away
For a single parent with two children in New Hampshire, support programs end in layers as income rises — and the sharpest edge sits at the NH Child Care Scholarship cutoff. The result is a structural penalty on workforce advancement: a rational reason to decline the promotion NH employers are trying to fill.
- Keeps the NH Child Care Scholarship — worth $15,000–20,000/yr for two children in care
- Net household resources: ≈$86,300
- Loses the entire Child Care Scholarship at the 85% SMI cutoff
- Net household resources: ≈$70,300
The $1,000 raise costs this family roughly $16,000 — and knocks it back toward ALICE. NH has no answer: one hand gives while the other takes away.
Cutoffs from NH DHHS SFY2025 program rules and federal program rules 2024–2026. Net-resource values are illustrative of cliff structure; exact subsidy values vary by county and provider and are labeled estimates until confirmed from NHCCSP rate schedules. Disability waiver cutoffs (Katie Beckett, DD waivers) are not included — NH DHHS administrative documents are not publicly indexed; that gap is stated rather than estimated.
The data New Hampshire doesn’t have
How many households in Derry can’t afford the basics? In Salem? In Windham? Nobody can tell you. New Hampshire is not a United For ALICE Partner State — so the town-level hardship data published for most of the country stops at our border.
Statewide figure: United For ALICE 2026 Report (2024 ACS data). Town-level figures are not published for any NH municipality.
Why is this grid blank? In ALICE Partner States, this research produces a number for every town and county. New Hampshire is not one of them — no NH organization has yet sponsored the study. We won’t guess at the reason. The blank tiles speak for themselves: in the #7-income state, you cannot look up how many of your own neighbors can’t afford the basics.
What 603 Circle is doing about it:
1. Formal inquiry to United For ALICE — process, cost, and sponsorship requirements for NH to join as a Partner State.
2. Formal inquiry to Granite United Way — offering to help organize business-community support for co-funding the research.
3. In parallel: building a clearly-labeled ACS-derived proxy from U.S. Census place-level income tables, so southern NH towns aren’t flying blind in the meantime.
Inquiries initiated June 2026 · Awaiting responseMethodology & standards
Every estimate on this page states its assumptions. These are the scope decisions behind the figures — and every primary source in one place.
Published benchmarks exist (Work Institute separation costs; Harvard Business School “The Caring Company” caregiver quit rates), but converting them into an NH annual figure requires an assumption no primary source supports. This site publishes verified figures only; the estimate is held until NH-specific turnover data exists.
National per-caregiver productivity benchmarks (NAC/AARP 2020) cover all caregiving, including eldercare. Applying them to an NH parents-only population would overstate the figure, so they are not used here.
BLS “consumer units” approximate but do not exactly equal households. Northeast regional spending averages exceed NH medians, which can inflate the per-household figure — partially offset by excluding several discretionary categories (alcohol, tobacco, education, reading) and by the 25%-retention conservative scenario. Each assumption and its direction of bias is documented in the source workbook below.
- United For ALICE — 2026 Report, 2024 ACS data · unitedforalice.org/national-overview
- BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — Table 1800, Northeast region, 2023 · bls.gov/cex/tables (workbook: cu-region-1-year-average-2023.xlsx)
- NH Fiscal Policy Institute — “The Economic Impact of the Granite State’s Child Care Shortage,” 2025 (2023 data) · nhfpi.org
- NH School Funding Fairness Project — special education funding analysis, June 2025 (FY2024 data) · fairfundingnh.org
- BIA / Saint Anselm College Center for Ethics in Society — NH Business Leader Surveys, 2024 & fall 2025 · anselm.edu / biaofnh.com
- State of the Nation Project — State of the States 2026 (NSDUH youth mental health data) · stateofnation.org/new-hampshire
- NH DHHS — Child Care Scholarship program rules SFY2025; Medicaid/CHIP eligibility · dhhs.nh.gov
Questions about any figure on this page? Challenge it: 603circle.com/contact. If you’re right, we’ll correct it — and credit you.