Mobility: A Culture on the Move: How
long have you lived in your community? In the United States,
only half the population is living in the same place that they lived
in five years ago. According to James M. Jasper, the only group that
moves more frequently than Americans are nomadic tribes. What
does that mean for your community? How does your community compare? To find out how your community compares, take a look at the following Community Indicator.
Age
COHORTS: Lets Compare Apples to Apples: What happened to all the residents of your community who were age 20
to 29 years old in 1990. By the year 2000, they had all turned
30 to 39 years old. So, why when analyzing communities do people
compare the 20 to 29 year olds of 1990 to the 20 to 29 year olds of
2000? Isn't that comparing apples to oranges? If you would
like compare apples to apples, take a look at Age COHORTS.
Understanding
Worker Flow Data: While communities can work on becoming
more "self-sufficient" and attracting jobs which meet the employment
needs of local residents, they can't ignore the need to cooperate regionally
on job creation efforts. Recently released "Worker flow data" from the census indicates that 51 Wisconsin counties rely on neighboring
counties and states for 20% or more of their workforce employment.
Location
Quotients: One
of the first economic analysis tools learned in any Economic Development
101 course is the Location Quotient. Traditionally, Location
Quotients were used to help identify export and import industries
and opportunities within a community. Today, economists are revisiting
Location Quotients as an easy and inexpensive tool to help
identify Industry Clusters. Usually, Location Quotients are calculated using national employment data for comparison. In Community Indicators, we compare Rhinelander Wisconsin community
to several comparable Wisconsin communities. The results may surprise
you.
Philanthropy:
Does Charity Begin at Home?: At an increasing rate, nonprofit organizations
rather than government are responding to community needs and individuals
are asked to provide charitable donations to support the cause. So,
just how charitable are your residents? The results might surprise you.
Get
an Education and Double Your Salary ( Part 1 of
a 2-part series):
This first part of the 2-part series deals primarily with high school
graduates. This issue examines educational attainment rates for Wisconsin
communities, the impact of educational attainment on income, and high
school graduation rates for Wisconsin High Schools.
Get an Education and
Double Your Salary ( Part 2 of a 2-Part Series):
This second part of the 2-part series focuses on the retention of college
graduates.
Increased
Fuel Expenditures Flowing Out-of-State About $1
billion will be leaving the state of Wisconsin over the next year as
a result of increased household expenditures on gasoline.
Self
Sufficiency: Defining Poverty For more than 40 years, this country
has used a standard for measuring poverty that does not begin to measure
poverty. New data and a report by the Wisconsin Women's Network provides
estimates on the wage required to sustain families without any public
or private assistance. 2004 estimates are available
for 70 different family types in each of Wisconsin’s Counties
and 10 tribes.
2
New "Works in Progress" (If you experience any problems with
these two Beta worksheets, please contact Bill Pinkovitz at: bill.pinkovitz@uwex.edu,
608-265-8255):
Keeping
Them Down on the Farm. 47% of principal farm operators
report that they work more then 100 days off of the farm. Could these
business people be the source for new innovative enterprises?
Increased
Fuel Expenditures Flowing Out-of-State...Revisited. Oh what a difference a year makes! About $3 billion will be leaving
the state of Wisconsin over the next year as a result of increased household
expenditures on gasoline.
It's Tax Time: Do You Know where you're Federal Tax Dollars are Going? A significant portion of many communities’ income comes from the payments received from the federal government.
When comparing the federal direct expenditures and obligations per capita to the national average, Wisconsin ranks 47'th.
High Speed Internet Access. While it has been difficult, if not impossible, to get good data on community connectivity rates, recent data collected by the FCC could shed light on the success our communities are having in terms of deploying advanced telecommunications.
Increasing Public Investments in Economic Development.
Most Counties in Wisconsin make investments in not-for-profit economic development corporations (at either the County level or regional level). Others make economic development investments within County Departments. Recent expenditure reports from Counties, indicate that County government in Wisconsin is spending on average, about $10 per capita on economic development activities. In 2004, these public investments ranged from a high of $31.80 per capita in Rusk County to a dime or less per capita in Buffalo, Manitowoc, Vernon, and Menominee Counties.
Lending Data Offers Insight Into Housing Issues.
Recent concerns about predatory lending practices and increasing home foreclosures across the country have a lot of community development professionals wondering about the scale of the problem in their local communities. Data reported by financial institutions as part of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), and shared in a user-friendly format by DataPlace™ provides some clues.
County Foreclosure Data.
While the state foreclosure rate is considerably lower here in Wisconsin, there were 5,925 foreclosure filings in Wisconsin during the first half of 2007. That’s represents a 63% increase over the filings during the first half of 2006 and is higher then the national increase of 56% for the same period of time. This indicator is the second in a 2-part series focusing on home mortgage lending.
County Civil Court Data Is The Key To Understanding Foreclosure Issues.
An analysis of civil court cases involving a home foreclosure indicate that the number of properties facing foreclosure in Wisconsin are up about 26.3% in 2007 over 2006. While that would indicate a dramatic increase, it is substantially less then the 131% increase in foreclosure filings reported for the state by RealtyTrac. In 2007, there was one foreclosure case for every 166 housing units in Wisconsin (A total of 19,267 properties in civil court).
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