Trend at a glance
Cascadia's long-term record in creating broadly shared economic security has been mixed, at best.
After several years of modest improvements, unemployment in Cascadia rose rapidly at the end of 2008,
with job losses accelerating in 2009.
Falling employment signals a sharp increase financial hardships for the region's families.
Updated October 2009.
(Click for more information on Sightline's research on economic security.)
More about economic security
What the economy indicator measures and why
To create an inclusive gauge of the financial prospects of Cascadia's families,
Sightline created an index of economic security that combines four key measures:
unemployment rates, median incomes, poverty rates, and the share of children living below the poverty line.
Read more 
Nationally, these measures tend to move in tandem:
when unemployment goes down, poverty and child poverty tend to fall, and median income to rise.
Sightline combines these four measures using methods adapted from the
Index of Leading Economic Indicators.
The composite trend provides a fuller picture of economic security -- especially
for the region's middle- and lower-income residents -- than any single indicator by itself.
The Scorecard's economy indicator uses the most complete and up-to-date numbers available.
Yet the figures for poverty and child poverty in British Columbia are already nearly three years old.
Data for the Northwest states are only slightly better;
figures for 2008 were released to the public in late 2009.
Because of these delays, policymakers are often flying blind,
with little information about how working families are really faring.
Read less 
The target and why it was chosen
The Scorecard looks to high-performing regions of the US and Canada as models.
Read more
For the US Northwest, the models are the Upper Midwest states of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
These states are similar in population and demographics to the Northwest states.
They have also enjoyed periods of robust middle-class
incomes and low rates of unemployment and poverty over the past several decades.
For British Columbia (which uses a slightly different measure of poverty than does the US),
the prairie provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan serve as the model.
Other nations may do substantially better than these models in providing broadly shared economic security --
but it is often difficult to compare international data with the information that's available for Cascadia.
(Click to read about how the Scorecard works, including how targets are chosen.)
Read less
Long-term trends
Between 1990 and 2008, the Northwest's combined economic output -- its gross regional product -- soared by
about 87 percent, and total personal income rose an
inflation-adjusted 70 percent.
But the benefits of these phenomenal economic gains were highly concentrated
among a relative handful of northwesterners at the top of the income ladder.
Read more
In fact, after years of ups and downs, by 2008 the poverty rate in the Northwest states was actually higher
than it was in 1990.
(Click for a chart of poverty rates in the Northwest states.)
Rates of child poverty and unemployment, however, had declined.
Middle- and lower-income Cascadians made only slight progress over those years
-- and subsequent data release may show that those scant gains eroded during 2009.
Taking a long view, the Scorecard's economic security indicator has fluctuated with economic cycles, posting
neither significant gains nor significant losses --
a sign that phenomenal economic growth doesn't always go hand-in-hand with rising economic well-being.
Read less
The results in detail
Cascadia -- like the rest of the world -- is facing the most severe economic crisis in decades, with
employment falling throughout the region. If history is any guide, rising unemployment foretells an increase in poverty rates
and a decline in middle-class incomes -- and a reversal of financial security gains that had been made in recent years.
Read more
The economic downturn is especially unwelcome, as the financial situation for lower- and middle-class Cascadians had improved only modestly over the previous decade.
In the Northwest states, for example, median income -- a proxy for how the middle class is faring -- declined in 2008
to nearly three thousand dollars below its 1998 peak.
(Click for a chart of median income in the Northwest states.)
The economic turmoil that began in 2008
has undoubtedly reduced median incomes -- but we will have to wait until the fall of 2010 to learn how the middle class fared in 2009, since income statistics are released only after a lengthy delay.
Compared with their status in 1990, British Columbians have fared little better than their US counterparts in recent years.
In 2007, the last year for which complete data are available,
the province marked its fifth consecutive year of improved economic security.
Yet the share of residents, including children, below the "low-income cutoff" (sometimes referred to as the Canadian poverty line)
was nearly the same as it was in 1990.
(Click for a chart of child poverty rates in British Columbia.)
Only employment trends showed significant long-term improvement in the province since 1990.
By the Scorecard's reckoning, the economy's frequent ups and downs suggest that rapid progress in economic security is possible.
Yet the reverse is also true: financial turmoil poses the threat of a declining financial wellbeing.
So as the region charts its way forward in a turbulent economy, it has the opportunity to rise to a singular challenge:
ensuring that the economic recovery is broadly shared, and genuinely improves the lives and livelihoods of all Cascadians.
Read less
Poverty rates,
Northwest states
Median income,
Northwest states
Child poverty,
British Columbia
