Boston is the capital of Massachusetts, it is one of the oldest and wealthiest cities in the US. Boston itself has less than 600 000 inhabitants, but including the nearby cities like Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline, greater Boston has nearly 6 millions inhabitants (US as a whole has close to 300 millions).

The poverty rate is low in Massachussets, at 10% it is about 2% below the nations average, but within pockets in Boston it can reach 30% and more. Sadly though, the poverty rate is at its highest among children; the most vulnerable are left almost unattended. USA and Sudan are the only two countries out of 199 that did not sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The economy of Boston is largely based on education, health care and high technology. As written in stone on the walls of the Harvard Shool of Public Health:
The highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being, and there are many good and unique public health programs in Massachussets. The access to health care, however, is systematically unevenly distributed across race, etnicity and socioeconomic class, and many of the public health programs are greatly underfunded. The total US spendings on healthcare reaches 1500 billions dollars, this is however largely used on drogs and surgery. The 2003 US public health service budget was around 50 billion dollars, so a meager 3.3% of the health care money goes to public and preventive care. In comparison, the 2002 US military budget was $ 360 billions, which is more than 10 times the Russian military spendings.

In the recent years of economic recession, the hardship experienced by low-income families has drastically increased due to cut-backs in social and health care. Meanwhile, the military budget has skyrocketed.