A new survey finds most Jersey residents are pretty satisfied with life in the great Garden state.

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Patrick Murray, Director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute says “we created an index for the Garden state, and have been keeping pretty close tabs on it for the past year and a half – and we found that the quality of life is ticking upwards… currently, 2-in-3 residents rate the state of New Jersey as either an excellent (15%) or good (47%) place to live. This 62% positive rating is down slightly from October… the scale ranges from minus 100 to plus 100 and it’s now at plus 25 – so it isn’t in the stratosphere yet, but it certainly keeps ticking up and up – it was at plus 21 back in December of 2010.”


 

He says “the quality of life ratings given by Garden state residents depends on a lot of things – and the key here for it going upwards recently has been some of the local ratings built into this index, “particularly ratings of residents’ own town – 33 percent excellent and 41 percent good- that’s a high number…rating of local schools has also gone up to 26 percent excellent and 42 percent good – and this is a positive all-time high since 1978 on that number.”

Murray adds “we also find there is a gender gap building here – we’re finding that women are much more positive than men – women give New Jersey a plus 30 on our index, whereas men score a plus twenty – women are looking at some particular things that are happening in service areas, such as schools and education, things that affect kids, and seeing some positive changes there, and men are looking at other areas which may have to do with crime, the economy and saying well the state hasn’t quite rebounded yet.”

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