The score
19 years behind targets

The trend
No progress.

Soundbite
Since the mid-1980s the Dow has risen nearly tenfold, while middle-class incomes in the Northwest have barely budged.

Picture it
Chart: The Dow soars while middle-class incomes stall

2007 results at a glance

Since 1990, the Northwest’s combined economic output—its gross regional product—has grown by 72 percent, after adjusting for inflation. During the same period, personal income rose by an inflation-adjusted 56 percent.

But the most recent data on economic security, from 2005, shows that middle- and lower-income people in Cascadia have made virtually no progress in 15 years.

2007 results in detail

• Despite a few small improvements, many middle- and lower-income northwesterners still face precarious economic conditions.
  
• After years of ups and downs, the poverty rate remains unchanged from 1990, while the child poverty rate is slightly lower and the unemployment rate slightly higher. One child in six lives in poverty in Cascadia.
  
• However, the Scorecard does show evidence of some recent gains: economic security in 2005 (the most recent year data were available) was a bit better than it was in 2004, which in turn was better than 2003. These gains were driven by declining unemployment and rising median household income.
  
• Median income, however, has been a mixed bag for the Northwest states. After adjusting for inflation, median income--a good gauge of middle-class well-being--is higher today than it was in 1990, yet is still below its 1998 peak.
• British Columbians’ overall economic security is worse than it was in 1990. And while the province’s median household income has shown recent improvement, after adjusting for inflation it is still lower than it was in 1990.
  
• The bright spot in British Columbia’s economic performance was its unemployment rate, which continued to decline from the much higher levels of the early 1990s.
  

Solutions: Stop flying blind

So while many innovative reforms could help boost Cascadians’ financial well-being, it will be impossible to know if they’re working until there is a reliable, regularly updated gauge of the financial health of ordinary working families.

In British Columbia, for example, the most recent figures on poverty and child poverty are two years old.

Without an accurate gauge of economic security, Cascadia’s leaders are flying blind; they have little way of knowing whether their policies are genuinely improving peoples’ lives.

Cascadia Scorecard 2007 sources
Cascadia Scorecard 2007 press kit

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