UF Researcher: Florida Leads Nation In Many Statistical Categories

May 7, 1999

GAINESVILLE — Florida ranks has the lowest undergraduate in-state tuition in the nation, while one of its metropolitan areas leads the country in personal income, the latest statistics from the University of Florida show.

The new 1999 edition of “Florida and the Nation,” compiled for the third year in a row by UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research, uses a broad collection of the most recent data available to compare the state with the rest of the nation.

“One of the new categories this year shows that Florida is eighth in the nation in the percentage of its children without health insurance,” said Susan Floyd, editor of the reference volume. “This is a statistic we should probably be aware of if we’re concerned with the health and well-being of children.”

For the college-aged, average undergraduate in-state tuition in Florida’s public four-year institutions in 1996-97 — the latest year comparative statistics were available — was $1,789, compared with $2,987 nationally and $6,533 for Vermont, the highest-ranked state, Floyd said.

In another notable Florida statistic, per capita personal income for the West Palm Beach-Boca Raton metropolitan area was estimated at $38,081 in 1996 and led the nation, followed closely by Naples with $34,830.

One major addition in this year’s edition is an appendix of metropolitan-area data for all of the 273 metropolitan areas as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Floyd said.

Other additions to the 1999 compilations include state data for college revenue; average automobile insurance costs; speeding-related and alcohol-related fatalities; and distribution of college degrees by sex, race and Hispanic origin.

“Typically we serve businesses interested in having one source for any kind of statistical or demographic information, or occasionally people moving to the state wanting to compare Florida with the rest of the nation,” said Floyd, the bureau’s coordinator for information and publications. “We’ve been surprised, though, to have college professors actually order copies for their courses.”

More women (54 percent) than men and more whites (74 percent) than any other race received bachelor’s degrees in Florida in 1994-95, according to statistics in the book provided by the National Center for Education Statistics. The largest number of bachelor degrees conferred in the state were in business/management (24 percent), followed by degrees in social and behavioral sciences (15 percent).

Tourism is such an important part of Florida’s economy that businesses often find those statistics useful, Floyd said. Just over 8 million overseas and Canadian visitors came to Florida in 1997, with the number of Canadian tourists up 10 percent over the previous year, she said.

In crime, corrections and legal services — another popular category — Florida’s female prison population tested twice as high as their male counterparts for HIV in 1995, Floyd said. Three percent of Florida’s 1,971 male state prisoners and 6 percent of the state’s 222 female prisoners tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, she said.

In terms of population, the state had two of the most densely populated urban areas in the nation. The Miami-Ft. Lauderdale consolidated metropolitan area (Miami-Dade and Broward counties) ranked fourth, and the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan area 10th in population density, she said.

The least densely-populated metropolitan area in the state is Naples, she said.

“A brief survey we conducted after the first volume told us that some of our users were looking for one source of national metropolitan-area demographic and economic data,” she said. “So we made the decision to expand the volume to include that information and will consider making other additions next year.”