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The People of Massachusetts

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In 1790 the census taken in Massachusetts showed that 378,787 people lived in the commonwealth. As of 2004, the state had nearly 6.5 million residents, including approximately 881,000 foreign-born inhabitants. Most of these people live in Greater Boston and the east half of Massachusetts. Western Massachusetts is for the most part rural.

The population of Massachusetts is made of a variety of racial, ancestral, and religious backgrounds. 81.99% of the people of Massachusetts are White, while Hispanics make up the largest minority group with 6.8%. 5.4% identify themselves as Black, 3.8% Asian, 2.3 mixed race, and 0.2% Native American. The five largest groups of ancestry of the people of Massachusetts are Irish (the state has one of the highest populations of those with Irish ancestry in the nation), Italian (Massachusetts also has one of the highest populations of Italians), English, French, and German. Other notable ancestries are Greek and Polish. There is also a small reservation of the Wampanoag Native American tribe located at Aquinnah and an unofficial reservation at Mashpee.

Originally, Massachusetts was filled with steadfast Puritans. However, Protestantism now comprises less than a third of the claimed religions of the state's population. Still, those same Protestants do continue to play a large role in the finance, business, art, education, and cultural preservation of the state. The largest religious grouping in Massachusetts is now Catholic, due to the high levels of migrations from Ireland, Italy, Puerto Rico, and other primarily Catholic areas. Those who directly descended from the Puritans now belong to several denominations; two with notable presences are the Congregational/United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Church. Both of these are known for their ardent defense of social justice, civil rights, and political issues like slavery, women's rights and the right to gay marriage. As of 2001, the people of Massachusetts identified their religions as this:

• Christian - 79%
o Catholic - 47%
o Protestant - 31%
 Congregational/United Church of Christ - 4%
 Baptist - 4%
 Episcopal - 3%
 Methodist - 2%
 Pentecostal - 2%
 Other Protestant or general Protestant - 16%
 Latter-day Saint 1%
o Other Christian - 1%
• Jewish - 2%
• Unitarian - 1%
• Other Religions - 1%
• Non-Religious - 17%

There are numbers of people leaving Massachusetts for a variety of reasons - about 40,000 a year. Many young individuals arriving at a working age as well as migrants and professionals are leaving for New Hampshire, Florida, Texas, and other areas in the Midwest, Southeast and West. One of the major reasons that many of these people quote as their cause for leaving Massachusetts is the high housing cost (the state has the third most expensive market in the US). Other factors included the need for better jobs, taxes, the desire for a safer place to raise kids, traffic, and more. For the most part, these same individuals identify themselves as pleased with their relocation and announce that they enjoy a higher level of public courtesy in their new places of residence.

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