While no states in the South ranked in the top 10 for prosperity, new data from EIG Global Community Partners’ “Distressed Communities Index” shows that some southern states are thriving.
“In Georgia, for example, the share of residents living in prosperous ZIP codes increased by 6.5 percentage points and the share living in distressed ZIP codes fell by 8.8 percentage points,” said an Axios report on the data. “The improvement was driven by declining economic distress in Atlanta's exurbs – a pattern also seen in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, Nashville, central Florida and Phoenix.”
Using the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, EIG compiles a ranking of each state that factors in its economic distress areas versus areas of economic prosperity. Metrics used to determine the ranking included: high school diploma rates, housing vacancy rates, adult employment, poverty rates, median income ratios, changes in employment and changes in establishments.
While some areas of the south showed improvement, many of the bottom ranked states (those with high levels of economic distress were in the region).
Mississippi was ranked last. A little under 10% of the state lives in a prosperous location and 45% of population lives in a distressed zip code. Louisiana, West Virginia, Alabama and Kentucky also had high distressed population rates.
“Economic distress is widespread across states in the Deep South, while prosperity is most common in Mountain West states,” said Axios. Top ranked states were Utah, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Nebraska, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Overall, 15.6% of the U.S. population lives in a distressed zip code and 24.4% live in a prosperous zip code, per the EIG ranking. Other categories in its ranking system include comfortable, mid-tier and at-risk.
According to EIG, “52 million Americans live in distressed zip codes, roughly the population of Texas and Florida combined,” while 81 million live in prosperous ones.