The Geography of Prosperity

ii The Hamilton Project • Brookings The Geography of Prosperity Ryan Nunn The Hamilton Project and the Brookings Institution Jana Parsons The Hamilton Project Jay Shambaugh The Hamilton Project, the Brookings Institution, and The George Washington University SEPTEMBER 2018 A CHAPTER IN THE HAMILTON PROJECT BOOK Place-Based Policies for Shared Economic Growth For a century, the progress our nation. [...] Median household Figure 1 shows the Vitality Index for 2016, with blue counties income in the top quintile of counties in the United States is receiving the highest scores and yellow counties receiving the more than twice as high as median household income in the lowest. [...] 71 percent of counties in the bottom vitality quintile in 1980 remained there in 2016, and fully 92 percent remained in the The eight counties that began in the bottom quintile in 1980 bottom two quintiles. [...] Figure 8 shows the average Vitality Index for the most- and least-rural counties.11 In 1980 the second-least-rural areas At the regional level, the Southeast and Southwest were were the most vital, indicating that relatively high-density clearly struggling in terms of vitality in 1980, and are still places (though not the highest) were having the most success. [...] 11 The Hamilton Project • Brookings Vitality Index Vitality Index Change in the Vitality Index Figures 9a and 9b show the level of and change in vitality by increased labor productivity and reduced the need for labor quintiles of industrial employment concentration.14 In 1980 in manufacturing.