A Washington, D.C.-based economic think tank, the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), has released a new analysis indicating that the country’s economic prosperity is shifting toward the Mountain West — and Utah has emerged as the clear national leader. The Beehive State’s share of residents in the top tier of economic well-being has grown from 47 percent to 57 percent in recent years, the study found.
Nearby, Colorado, Nevada and Montana also rank highly, further highlighting the region’s prosperity ascendance.
The EIG findings show that Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Georgia have seen the largest increases in the share of residents living in prosperous ZIP codes since the early 2010s on its Distressed Communities Index.
Other insights from the EIG study highlight the shifting landscape of economic prosperity across the United States:
- While economic success was once largely concentrated in coastal metropolitan areas, the narrative has flipped, with more affordable housing and expanding job bases driving prosperity in the South and Mountain West.
- Despite disparities, communities across all of the DCI’s tiers of economic well-being have generally improved in indicators of poverty, education and employment relative to a decade ago.
- Notably, across all five tiers of the DCI, the smallest segment of the U.S. population (51.5 million) lives in distressed ZIP codes. This is in part because less than half of the ZIP codes that fall into the bottom tier on the index are metropolitan, with the majority being rural.