FHA Loans in Rhode Island
About This State and its People, Places, and Industries
The State of Rhode Island is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area. Rhode Island borders Connecticut to the west and Massachusetts to the north and east, and it shares a water boundary with New York's Fishers Island to the southwest.Rhode Island was the first of the thirteen original colonies to declare independence from British rule and the last to ratify the United States Constitution.
Rhode Island's official nickname is "The Ocean State," a reference to the state's geography, since Rhode Island has several large bays and inlets that amount to about 30% of its total area. Its land area is 1,045 square miles (2706 km2), but its total area is significantly larger (in the United States, all seawater and ocean floors that are more than three nautical miles from land belong to the Federal Government.).
The center of population of Rhode Island is located in Providence County, in the city of Cranston. A corridor of population can be seen from the Providence area, stretching northwest following the Blackstone River to Woonsocket, where nineteenth-century mills drive industry and development. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2005, Rhode Island had an estimated population of 1,076,189, which is a decrease of 3,727, or 0.3%, from the prior year and an increase of 27,870, or 2.7%, since the year 2000. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 15,220 people (that is 66,973 births minus 51,753 deaths) and an increase due to net migration of 14,001 people into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 18,965 people, and migration within the country produced a net decrease of 4,964 people.
The six largest ancestry groups in Rhode Island are: Irish (19%), Italian (19%), French Canadian (17.3%), English (12%), Hispanic 11% (predominantly Puerto Rican and Dominican, with smaller Central American populations), and Portuguese (8.7%).
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 8.07% of the population aged 5 and older speaks Spanish at home, while 3.80% speaks Portuguese, 1.96% French, and 1.39% Italian.
6.1% of Rhode Island's population were reported as under 5, 23.6% under 18, and 14.5% were 65 or older. Females made up approximately 52% of the population.
Rhode Island has a higher percentage of Americans of Portuguese ancestry (who dominate Bristol County), including Portuguese Americans and Cape Verdean Americans than any other state in the nation. Additionally, the state also has the highest percentage of Liberian immigrants, with more than 15,000 residing. French Canadians form a large part of northern Providence County whereas Irish Americans have a strong presence in Newport and Kent counties. Yankees of English ancestry still have a presence in the state as well, especially in Washington county, and are often referred to as "Swamp Yankees". African immigrants, including Cape Verdean Americans, Liberian Americans, Nigerian Americans and Ghanaian Americans, form significant and growing communities in Rhode Island. Although Rhode Island has the smallest total area of all fifty states, it has the second highest population density in the Union, second only to New Jersey.
The Rhode Island economy had a colonial base in fishing and farming, each of which respectively became shipping and manufacturing upon independence.
The Blackstone River Valley is known as the "Birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution". It was in Pawtucket that Samuel Slater set up Slater Mill in 1793, using the waterpower of the Blackstone River to power his cotton mill. For a while, Rhode Island was one of the leaders in textiles. However, with the Great Depression, most textile factories relocated to southern US states. The textile industry still constitutes a part of the Rhode Island economy, but does not have the same power that it once had.
Other important industries in Rhode Island's past included toolmaking, costume jewelry and silverware. An interesting by-product of Rhode Island's industrial history is the amount of abandoned factories - many of them now being used for low-income housing, elderly housing, condominiums, museums, and offices. Today, much of the economy of Rhode Island is based in services, particularly healthcare and education, and still to some extent, manufacturing.
The headquarters of Citizens Financial Group, the 14th largest bank in the United States, is located in Providence.[62] The Fortune 500 companies CVS Caremark and Textron are based in Woonsocket and Providence, respectively. FM Global, GTECH Corporation, Hasbro, American Power Conversion, Nortek, and Amica Mutual Insurance are all Fortune 1000 companies that are based in Rhode Island.
Rhode Island's 2000 total gross state product was $33 billion, placing it 45th in the nation. Its 2000 per capita personal income was $29,685, 16th in the nation. Rhode Island has the lowest level of energy consumption per capita of any state. As of May 2010, the state's unemployment rate is 12.5%.
Health services are Rhode Island's largest industry. Second is tourism, supporting 39,000 jobs, with tourism-related sales at $3.26 billion in the year 2000. The third-largest industry is manufacturing. Its industrial outputs are costume jewelry, fabricated metal products, electrical equipment, machinery, shipbuilding and boatbuilding. Rhode Island's agricultural outputs are nursery stock, vegetables, dairy products and eggs.
Rhode Island's taxes were appreciably higher than neighboring states, because Rhode Island's income tax was based on 25% of the payer's federal income tax payment. Governor Carcieri has claimed that the higher tax rate had an inhibitory effect on business growth in the state and called for reductions to increase the competitiveness of the state's business environment. In 2010, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed a new state income tax structure that was then signed into law on June 9th, 2010 by Governor Carcieri. The income tax overhaul has now made Rhode Island competitive with other New England states by lowering its maximum tax rate to 5.99% and has reduced the number of tax brackets to three.
Rhode Island has two professional sports teams; both of which are top-level minor league affiliates for teams in Boston. The Pawtucket Red Sox, of the AAA International League, are an affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. The Pawtucket Red Sox play at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and have won two league titles in 1973 and 1984. The other professional minor league team is the Providence Bruins, who are an American Hockey League affiliate of the Boston Bruins. The Providence Bruins play in the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence and won the AHL's Calder Cup during the 1998–99 AHL season. The National Football League's New England Patriots play at Gillette Stadium in nearby Foxborough, Massachusetts, approximately 18 miles north of Providence.
There are four NCAA Division I schools. The four teams all compete in four different conferences. The Brown University Bears compete in the Ivy League, the Bryant Bulldogs compete in the Northeast Conference, the Providence Friars compete in the Big East Conference and the Rhode Island Rams compete in the Atlantic-10 Conference. Three of the schools compete in the FCS division for college football. Brown, Bryant and Rhode Island are the three schools who currently field football teams.
Rhode Island also has a long and storied history for athletics. Prior to the great expansion of athletic teams all over the country Providence and Rhode Island in general played a great role in supporting teams. The Providence Grays won the first World Championship in baseball history in 1884. The team played their home games at the old Messer Street Field in Providence. The Grays played in the National League from 1878 to 1885. They defeated the New York Metropolitans of the American Association in a best of five game series at the Polo Grounds in New York. Providence won three straight games to become the first champions in major league baseball history. Babe Ruth played for the minor league Providence Grays of 1914 and hit his only official minor league home run for that team before being recalled by the Grays parent club, the Boston Red Stockings.
A now defunct professional football team, the Providence Steam Roller won the 1928 NFL title. They played in a 10,000 person stadium called the Cycledrome.[88] A team by a similar name, the Providence Steamrollers, played in the Basketball Association of America; which would become the National Basketball Association.
From 1930 to 1983, America's Cup races were sailed off Newport, and the both extreme-sport X Games and Gravity Games were founded and hosted in the state's capital city.
The International Tennis Hall of Fame is in Newport at the Newport Casino, site of the first U.S. National Championships in 1881. The Hall of Fame and Museum were established in 1954 by James Van Alen as "a shrine to the ideals of the game." The Hall of Fame Museum encompasses over 20,000 square feet of tennis history, chronicling tennis excellence from the 12th century to today. The Hall of Fame has 13 grass courts, and is the site of the Hall of Fame Tennis Championships, the only professional tennis event played on grass courts in the United States. The first members of the Hall of Fame were inducted in 1955, and as of 2008, there are 207 players, contributors, and court tennis players in the Hall of Fame.
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