The Opportunity Index ranks all 50 states using indicators such as the unemployment rate, poverty rate, on-time graduation rate and others to assign a first of its kind Opportunity Score. According to the Opportunity Index report released yesterday, Nevada is the worst place in the nation to move if you are looking for opportunity. The index is also used to grade over 2,400 U.S. counties. Other states at the bottom of the list included Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana.
Opportunity Nation's new Opportunity Index ranked all 50 states based on unemployment rate, poverty rate, on-time graduation rate, and others indicators with Minnesota coming in 2nd place. Minnesota earned a score of 81.2 out of 100. What helped Minnesota to stand out was how the state weathered the economic downturn with higher than average incomes and low unemployment rates, high graduation rates (87%) and keeping children in school (only 4.7% of MN teens are not in school and are not working).
I'm a big believer in convergence -- those moments where the same idea or belief gets repeated in the fourth, fifth, or sixth different place and it tells you maybe that idea's time is ripe. We have been experiencing just such a moment around the American Dream. More people are questioning whether the Dream is actually alive.
A coalition of nearly 200 organizations called "Opportunity Nation," emerging from the right, left and center of the political spectrum and with reach to more than 100 million Americans, took up the challenge of restoring the American Dream.
As of Friday morning, every state and nearly every county in the U.S. has been given an "opportunity score" to determine where in the country economic mobility is flourishing and where it has grown stagnant. Called the "Opportunity Index," the interactive website is being unveiled as a part of the Opportunity Nation summit convening this week in upper Manhattan.
More than five hundred local leaders, activists, entertainers, and political luminaries gathered today at Columbia University as part of the Opportunity Nation Summit, a national convening to officially kick-‐off the Opportunity Nation campaign and to serve as a starting point to develop a shared plan to restore opportunity to more Americans.
On January 28, Opportunity Nation took a major step toward our goal of advancing a bipartisan agenda that enhances opportunity and mobility for all Americans by convening our first coalition meeting in Washington, DC.
A recent study analyzing the 2009 US Census shows that 30% – nearly 1 in 3 Americans – fell below the “low-income threshold,” which is total earnings of $43,512 for a family of four.
The Boston Globe recently published an article by Hope Yen that demonstrates the power of what we measure and how we measure it: under this new formulation of the poverty rate in the US, the official figure for 2009 jumps from 14.3% (the previous official rate) to 15.7% - meaning that nearly 1 in 6 Americans is officially poor.
Too often these numbers are viewed as mere statistics or data points, when in fact they are parents, children, neighbors, and friends. They have names and faces and life stories.
