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Two localities are worlds apart

With their different economic pictures, Sherborn and Springfield illustrate the growing financial inequality in Massachusetts

By Megan Woolhouse

 |  Globe Staff  

  December 18, 2011

Sherborn, the state’s wealthiest community, is a bucolic enclave of sweeping estates and horse farms nestled amid Boston’s most prosperous suburbs. Nearly two hours west sits Springfield, a city with a hollowed-out economy, hungry for jobs and home to some of the state’s highest levels of poverty. With their opposite economic destinies, they are rarely confused, but together they embody the forces that are widening the income gap in Massachusetts, a divide that has increasingly separated rich and poor.

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