How is America’s Heartland doing? What many elites in Washington, New York and California consider “flyover country” is essential to the safety and prosperity of the nation.
Last month the Brooking’s Metropolitan Policy Program partnered with the Walton Family Foundation to release a by-the-numbers look at economic and social conditions in the interior U.S. Trends in 19 diverse Heartland states were examined. The conclusion was that the region is doing relatively well.
According to the Factbook, “the region enjoys key strengths in advanced manufacturing, agriculture, and other exports… The Heartland’s employment rate and cost-of-living adjusted median earnings—critical measures of wellbeing—actually exceed the rest of the country. And those measures are rising in the region—meaning more people may be living more comfortably.”
Three major takeaways emerge clearly from the Factbook, as noted in its’ Executive Summary:
The Heartland economy is doing better than is sometimes portrayed. Growth measured by job and output growth have been steady, if not stellar, since 2010 with all of the Heartland states adding jobs and 18 increasing their output. Prosperity has also been slowly rising as all 19 states enjoyed increased standards of living, all 19 posted increases in the average wage, and 12 saw productivity increases. Supporting all of this, meanwhile, is an impressive base of crown jewel export industries, in particular strong concentrations of advanced manufacturing in the eastern Heartland and of agribusiness in the western Heartland. Overall, the 19 Heartland states constitute a manufacturing super-region and export powerhouse that outperforms the rest of the country on a number of core economic indicators.
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Serious deficits in the region’s human capital and innovation capacity pose the most serious challenges to improving future prosperity. On this front the factbook’s indicators depict a region that is—in most places—struggling to amass the human and technology capacity needed to support broad-based prosperity. Regarding the region’s stocks of human capital, only the Dakotas added population as fast as the rest of the nation, meaning that slow population growth—including among prized young workers—limits the region’s overall growth prospects. Worse, only three Heartland states exceeded the average B.A. attainment for the rest of the country, meaning that most places and populations in the region may be unprepared for an increasingly digitalized labor market. Turning to the region’s innovation assets, weak R&D flows, a thin roster of top universities for tech transfer, and a near-complete dearth of venture capital (VC) investment outside Chicago leave Heartland firms starved of the new ideas, new practices, and funding leveraged by firms elsewhere to drive competitive breakthroughs. Finally, lower levels of urban dynamism and epidemics of obesity and opioid use represent substantial drags on productivity and output. In sum, these deficits represent the most challenging findings of the factbook and pose the greatest hurdles to changemakers…
The good news is that even in its most challenging areas for improvement, the Heartland boasts some of the most impressive and impactful collaborations anywhere of business, civic, and government changemakers working together to solve problem.
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