Economic Innovation Group Report Charts Varying Recovery From Recession Across the Country

Title: 2018 Distressed Communities Index

Source: Economic Innovation Group

Ten years after the Great Recession, some regions of the country have managed to recover or even grow, while other areas have been less fortunate.

The Economic Innovation Group (EIG) recently released a report identifying the prosperity within U.S. zip codes, counties, and states during the years between 2012-16 and 2007-11. The 2018 Distressed Communities Index assigns communities one of five distress rankings, from prosperous to distressed, using seven metrics including high school education, poverty, employment, income, and others factors.

The report concludes that the concentration of underserved racial and ethnic groups in distressed and at-risk communities reduced over time but were still overrepresented in distressed communities. Educational attainment varied greatly across the five distress rankings, with postsecondary attainment ranging from nearly 50 percent of prosperous zip codes to 15 percent in distressed ones.

EIG also released a companion site to explore individual communities and the key findings found in the report.

Click here to read the full report.

—Ben Schaap