Whither Indiana?

 Micheale Hicks teaches economics at Ball State. His piece, Economic Opportunity Is Now In High Quality Of Life Places, came through today. He brings up a lot of interesting facts and history, but I got my subject line from the following:

The empirical evidence is now extraordinarily clear. Places with restrictive social policies in the United States fail to become destinations for economic opportunity. They struggle to attract and retain their share of well-educated people. That trend is sure to continue, if not accelerate.

However, by the 2000s, something else arose that mattered far more than economic opportunity. Our national focus on school quality made available actual data at the school level. This data revealed surprisingly vast differences between schools. At the same time, labor markets began valuing education far more heavily.

So, for the past couple of decades, it has become obvious that the quality of a K-12 and college education were prime determinants of economic opportunity for individuals.

In the post-COVID environment, the role of quality of life is even stronger. Today a quarter of all young, educated people have full-time remote jobs, and half work at least partially remote. The certain effect of this is that the amenities (and dis-amenities) of a region will weigh more heavily on prospective residents than ever before.

Though people are wonderfully heterogeneous beasts, we know from recent research what the most popular attributes of a region are. First, they are superb (not merely good) schools and an absence of crime.

A few natural amenities matter, but they are less important than local recreational opportunities. Healthier populations lead to higher quality of life in a region, which is likely connected to recreational opportunities. None of this should be news to anyone.

What is new is the fact that the effect of quality of life on population growth is close to four times larger after COVID than in the decade before. Much of that is due to remote work accelerating the existing trends. We don’t yet know how long that will last, but my guess is for at least a generation. We also know that a welcoming social climate matters.

States, cities and towns who make themselves unwelcoming toward groups of people have and will find themselves with fewer of those residents, and fewer of their friends and family members. With economic opportunity wrapped so closely to quality of life, we should expect preferences toward state and local policies to play an increasing role in local choices. None of this can be ignored.

We have a General Assembly breathing hard over trans athletes, which are at best a negligible issue in this state, and in banning books in schools, which adds much to Indiana as a bastion of anti-intellectualism, and in backing charter schools over its constitutional duties to public education, which leaves public education in a less than stellar position, and undermining environmental protections, which can only attract those interested in a less than healthy population.

Muncie benefits from Ball State. I have not seen Bloomington in almost two decades, but I cannot help think IU does the same for Bloomington. Indianapolis prizes its colleges and museums. That does not leave much for cities like Anderson, or Noblesville.

So, what does it take for Indiana to join the 21st Century?

sch 4/22