By Sue Kirchoff, Globe Staff and Bill Dedman, Globe Correspondent, 05/22/2002

any regions of Massachusetts did not benefit from the economic boom of the 1990s, according to US Census Bureau data released yesterday, with incomes generally rising in the technology belt bounded by Interstate 495 but falling in one-fifth of the state's communities. Median household income fell during the longest economic expansion in US history in most of the state's major cities, including New Bedford, Pittsfield, Springfield, and Worcester, and in smaller communities in the central and western parts of the state.

Those localities are struggling to arrest a long slide in manufacturing, with some still unable to reclaim jobs lost in the sharp recession of the 1980s and early 1990s.

At the same time, incomes jumped by a quarter to a third in a number of communities snuggled along I-495. Bolton, Boxborough, Southborough, Wenham, Wrentham, and Upton were ranked among the top 20 in income growth, adjusted for inflation.

The economic impact was not uniform even in bustling regions of the state, however. In the Boston area, Chelsea and Revere lost ground, while incomes in the City of Boston grew by just 4 percent, compared with a 42 percent leap in the city in the 1980s.

Overall, the expansion was enough to push statewide median income up 4.8 percent, to $50,502 from $48,209 in 1989.

Massachusetts experienced the second-largest rise in median income among the six New England states, trailing only Vermont at 5.1 percent.

Income in Massachusetts for full-time working women was $32,059, while the figure for men was $43,048.

For maps, spreadsheets, and rankings based on the Census 2000 long form data for Massachusetts and New England, go to www.boston.com/census.

Unemployment fell, but the state's poverty rate rose slightly to 8.6 percent, from 8 percent, according to an analysis of the data.

The numbers are just one indicator of economic well-being, but they are telling, especially in contrast with 1979-1989 Census data, which showed median incomes rising all across the state. They also dovetail with other recent studies that have reported that the state's gains during the '90s were concentrated in a few geographic regions and economic sectors.

Nationwide Census data on the economy are only gradually being released, but specialists have been surprised by the patchy nature of growth around the country during the 1990s.

"The big story of the '80s was that we had a high-tech [surge] that was generalized -- we had production sites that were scattered rather widely and, in that sense, there was a general, broad-based boom," said Fred Breimyer, chief economist at State Street Bank.

"In the 1990s, while the tech story has continued, it's a case where we've had the second coming of tech -- and the second coming of tech was not dispersed near so broadly," Breimyer said.

Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, said that the Massachusetts income figures track other data, such as unemployment and poverty rates, and "on every measure of economic performance the west is behind."

A study released last week for the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, or MassINC, found the western half of the state largely missed out on economic growth in the mid to late 1990s. In fact, the economic divide between different regions is now larger than it has been at any time in the past three decades.

There are a number of reasons for the geographic disparities, including the decline in manufacturing and a tight job market in the western half of the state that may have limited the growth of dual-earner families. Nationwide, median income has improved in recent decades in part due to the increased number of working women. According to the Census Bureau, nearly 61 percent of Massachusetts families with children under age 6 had both parents working in 2000.

"Everybody grew in the '80s, but the east grew faster," Sum said. "In the '90s, the east grew a little, and the west fell."

Median income is derived by dividing income distribution in two, with half the group having income above the median amount and half below. It is different than the mean, or average, which is calculated by dividing overall income by the units in a group. Using a median prevents the data from being skewed by exceptionally high household incomes. The latest numbers come from Census long forms, given to one in six respondents, that asked for detailed information on a variety of topics, including education, income, and commuting patterns.

The discouraging numbers are not confined to Massachusetts. The Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research at the State University of New York at Albany has been analyzing the census findings as they are gradually released. With data in hand for about 130 million people in major metropolitan areas, it has found that some regions of the country did not fare as well as expected during the '90s.

"It's a fairly bleak picture," said the center's director, John Logan. "The bright spots that I've seen so far are in northwestern California, the Bay Area, and Washington and Oregon. Much of the Midwest seems to be doing better, rebounding."

Though median income rose about 10 percent overall in the United States, about 15 metropolitan areas saw declines. The Northeast in general did not do well, and the New York City region was flat, Logan said.

"It's surprising because we thought of the '90s as a decade of relative prosperity," Logan said. "Median income is up a little bit, so that's kind of the little person. Per capita income is up more; it's pulled up by people with high incomes. But poverty is up, too . . . that's the trend of increasing inequality."

In Massachusetts, all but about 80 of the state's 351 cities and towns showed some income gain during the 1990s.

The most affluent community was Weston, with median income of $153,918 -- a 24 percent gain. At the bottom of the pack was Gosnold, where income fell 55 percent, to $22,344. Springfield had a 9 percent decline in median income, which fell to $30,417.

Nearly 9 percent of the state's households had income below $10,000, while 6.8 percent had incomes of $150,000 or more.

"During the last decade, we've lost more manufacturing, which was the major base of our economy for the last 50 or 60 years," said Allan W. Blair, president and CEO of the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts. "We haven't replaced a lot of the jobs that we lost in manufacturing with equal-paying or higher-paying jobs. That might be one of the reasons we're seeing the decline in median family income."

His organization, funded by the business community, markets Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties to outside businesses. It has joined forces with Hartford, Conn., to market the region, with its concentration of colleges -- and more than 115,000 college students -- as the "knowledge corridor." Blair said during the past year, the western counties outperformed the state and Suffolk County in terms of work force growth and absorption of the work force into the labor market.

Sue Kirchhoff can be reached at kirchhoff@globe.com.