In 2016, the Washington, DC think-tank, Economic Innovation Group, examined economic distress throughout the country. Through its study, the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) was able to develop a number of maps, charts, findings and a report that ‘scored’ the dimensions of community distress.

EIG says that the Distressed Communities Index ‘is an attempt to map and analyze the dimensions of basic community well-being across the United States’.

The higher the score, the greater the distress. The scores range from 0 to 100, moving from most prosperous (green) to most distressed (red).

It’s maps, infographics, and report captures data from more than 25,000 zip codes.

In all, it covers 312 million people or 99 percent of America.

The DCI combines seven complementary measure for accessing the dimensions of ‘economic well being’ throughout the United States. Using the latest available Census Bureau data, the EIG was able to determine how well communities were fairing after the 2008 Recession.

According to the study, community distress ‘manifests itself in

• a lack of residential investment,
• in shuttering businesses, and
• in disappearing job opportunities;’ while wealthy communities had the inverse relationship.

High school diplomas were ‘the entry-level ticket into the economy and they remain scarce in many struggling neighborhoods’.

Adult unemployment identified communities where connections to the labor market have ‘frayed’. Prospering communities, on the other hand, made job opportunities available to draw people back into the labor market.

The DCI concluded that analyzing zip codes reveals the the unequal distribution of resources, or the spatial inequality, between varying neighborhoods. According to the study, a number of major cities with relatively low overall community distress showed large numbers of people living in poverty. For those living in those cities, this meant that experience dealing with daily stress varied.

Spatial inequality theory suggests that given those differences the association needed for wide-shared resource distribution becomes difficult and frays.

The DCI notes also notes that certain cities have the means to address the lack of resources in distressed communities while others don’t.

This furthers spatial inequality in impoverished communities.

Budget cuts to summer Baltimore city youth programs, for instance, may have a greater net effect than would budget cuts to Washington, DC city youth program. DC city youth would have greater opportunities for on the job training.

‘The divide between prosperity and distress lie along the lines of economic specialization,’ says the EIG. ‘Prosperous large cities happen to be cities that specialize in innovation-intensive, technology-based, and high-end services industries’. Distressed cities, on the other hand, are ones that have struggled to transition from an industrial economy.

On the surface, education appears to be the stepping stone to economic opportunity.

However, lived experiences dealing with distressing conditions continue to be a stumbling block for those trapped in poverty.

The Distressed Community Index underscores how ‘geography impacts destiny’. The index notes:

Place matters.

This simple concept has never been better understood than it is today.

The American Dream is
predicated on the idea that anyone from any place or background can climb to the highest rungs of the economic ladder. But there is a growing body of evidence that the more time an individual
spends living in a distressed community—especially at childhood—the worse that individual’s

lifetime chances of achieving economic stability or success. And not all poor neighborhoods are alike; some offer vastly better chances of economic mobility than others.

The United States is still a land of opportunity for many.
But when it comes to life outcomes, geography is too often destiny.

Group, E. I. (2016). The 2016 Distressed Communities Index: An Analysis of Community Well-Being Across the United States. Washington, DC: Economic Innovation Group. Retrieved from

http://eig.org/dci/report