“People were moving out of town -- they just gave up -- packed their bags and went someplace else.   The city was -- albeit prematurely -- labeled as a dying city.  The classic victim of the rust belt."

Howard Ploman, Waterbury city planner

Employed residents of the Central Naugatuck Valley Region shrank 5.8 percent between 1990 and 2001.

Poverty in Connecticut grew during the 1990s from a 3.5% rate in 1987-88 to a 9.1% rate in 1997-8.

40,000 more Connecticut children were living in poverty in 1998 than in 1989.