29 October 2020

Update > Distressed Communities Index 2020 (Economic Innovation Group)

Let's see what's changed after this previous blog post about the CDI 2017

Be smart: This isn't a Republican or Democratic problem.
At every level of government, both parties represent distressed areas. But the economic fortunes of haves and have-nots have widened the political chasm, which hasn't been addressed by substantial policy proposals from either side

25 September 2017

Distressed Community Index 2017

America's great divide:
The large parts of America 
 behind by today's economy
Kim Hart https://www.axios.com    
Economic prosperity is concentrated in America's elite zip codes, but economic stability outside of those communities is rapidly deteriorating.
Data: Economic Innovation Group
Distressed Communities Index
Map: Lazaro Gamio / Axios
 
What that means: U.S. geographical economic inequality is growing, meaning your economic opportunity is more tied to your location than ever before. A large portion of the country is being left behind by today's economy, according to a county-by-county report released this morning by the Economic Innovation Group, a non-profit research and advocacy organization. This was a major election theme that helped thrust Donald Trump to the White House.
The 2017 Distressed Communities Index
The Distressed Communities Index (DCI) combines seven complementary metrics into a broad-based assessment of community economic well-being in the United States. Relying on Census Bureau data for the years 2011 to 2015, the DCI covers over 26,000 zip codes and 99.9 percent of the U.S. population as well as cities, counties and congressional districts, enabling Americans to understand how their local well-being stacks up at every scale of life. The DCI groups places evenly into five different tiers based on their performance on the index: Prosperous, comfortable, mid-tier, at risk, and distressed.
As you’ll see below, the U.S. economy contains a diverse and fragmented landscape of economic well-being—one in which many communities are flourishing, while far too many are left behind. . .
 

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UPDATE > 20 October 2020 Ideas + Advocacy: Advancing innovative solutions to America’s economic challenges.

Join the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) on Tuesday, October 20th at 2:00 pm ET for a webinar on the findings from EIG’s latest Distressed Communities Index (DCI), “The Spaces Between Us: The Evolution of American Communities in the New Century.”

Explore

The DCI is a timely research project and digital mapping interactive that visualizes community well-being across the country down to the zip code scale. The report finds that, despite modest progress reducing racial disparities in exposure to community economic distress, the benefits of national economic growth of the last two decades largely bypassed America’s most vulnerable communities.

This is the fourth edition of the DCI, which has been cited extensively in leading national and local news publications to contextualize uneven economic conditions across the country. Non-profit organizations and state and local governments utilize the DCI to target services and programs supporting distressed communities. Healthcare providers, academics, and private businesses incorporate the DCI into their work. At the national level, the DCI is used to inform federal policies to forge a more balanced and equitable geography of national economic growth.

Panelists from EIG will demonstrate how the DCI can provide crucial context to support policy efforts that ensure the COVID-19 recovery is more inclusive than the recovery from the Great Recession. Please reach out to info@eig.org with any questions.

This is a past event. View a recording of the webinar for more information

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Introduction to the Distressed Communities Index (DCI)

Explore > https://eig.org/dci/interactive-map

The Distressed Communities Index (DCI) examines economic well-being at the zip code level in order to provide a detailed view of the divided landscape of American prosperity. When we consider the health of the U.S. economy only in aggregate terms, we miss out on the textured—and deeply uneven—story of how national growth and prosperity lift up, or leave behind, individual communities and the residents who call them home. The DCI is therefore an attempt to understand the spatial distribution of U.S. economic well-being. It is a lens through which we can evaluate where and for whom the country truly lives up to its promise as a land of opportunity.

This is the fourth edition of the DCI, which was first launched in 2015. Leading national and local news publications rely on the DCI to contextualize uneven economic conditions across the country. Non-profit organizations and state and local governments utilize the DCI to target services and programs supporting distressed communities. Healthcare providers, academics, and private businesses incorporate the DCI into their work. At the national level, the DCI is used to inform federal policies to forge a more balanced and equitable geography of national economic growth.

7 metrics and 5 tiers of communities
The chart displays average values for the seven component metrics of the DCI across the five tiers of communities, here defined at the zip code level. Hover over a metric or tier to explore more.


The index combines seven distinct and complementary socioeconomic indicators into a single score that depicts how economic well-being in a community compares to its peers. The DCI is calculated at four different levels of geography, each scale revealing its own insights about the U.S. economy: zip codes, counties, cities, and congressional districts. Within each level, places are sorted into quintiles based on their performance on the index: prosperous, comfortable, mid-tier, at risk, and distressed. 

About the DCI

The centerpiece of the DCI is an interactive map that allows users to explore data at the zip code, county, and congressional district levels by state. The DCI is derived from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Business Patterns and American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates for the 2014-2018 period. It covers nearly 25,500 zip codes and 99 percent of the U.S. population.

The nation’s longest-ever economic expansion came to a grinding halt in 2020, just as the benefits of robust and prolonged growth had finally begun to reach many marginalized workers and communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has once again exposed deep fractures in our nation’s social and economic well-being, disproportionately affecting the most disadvantaged Americans and hitting communities of color the hardest. The events of this year have provided brutal reminders that the terms of the American experience are still too often dictated by race, place, and inequality. Since 2000, many inequities that cut deep across the map of the United States have persisted. The pandemic and associated economic fallout laid these inequalities painfully bare. At this moment of national introspection and upheaval, we hope this edition of the DCI gives Americans a chance to step back, consider where we have been, and use those insights to inform our future.

Conclusion

The pandemic has pushed the American economy into uncharted waters and placed low-wage service industries and the people of color predominantly employed in them at the epicenter of a deep recession that has left other industries, professions, and demographics relatively unscathed. Its worst economic impacts will therefore be experienced most acutely in the already distressed and at risk neighborhoods where directly-affected workers and populations tend to reside. As a result, the pandemic will test the fragility of the more equitable, more diverse prosperity that was taking shape across the country and threaten the modest progress made in many Black communities since the turn of the century.

The DCI shows how seemingly abstract forces such as a pandemic that should be color blind end up not being so when they map on top of pre-existing inequalities. In that sense, the pandemic should be a wake up call that the magnitude of our current divides leaves our economy and society more vulnerable in the face of outside shocks. 

Make no mistake, there is much to celebrate about the past decade and the breadth and duration of the economic expansion that followed the Great Recession, which demonstrated the positive impact tight labor markets can have for low income families. Yet, it is now clear that modest gains briefly enjoyed can slip away in an instant, while the foundations of prosperity for well-off people and places stand on much firmer ground. In retrospect, the 2010s looks like a grievous missed opportunity to invest in a more inclusive future that narrows the gaps between communities, rather than preserves them.

 

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Interested in learning more about your community? Explore the map here.

 

 

 

 

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