Key Economic Indicators Show Communities Growing Unevenly from 2010 to 2023
The last few decades have not been easy on the U.S. economy. From the mortgage crisis and the Great Recession to the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, supply-chain disruptions, and high inflation, it’s been one hit after another.
But an analysis of key economic metrics since 2010 in the American Communities Project does not show massive struggles and pain. In most community types, the data suggest many economic conditions have actually improved — although at uneven rates.
The one exception is homeownership — and that concern may be driving a lot of angst in the U.S. today.
To understand the state of the economy, the ACP examined four key economic indicators for all 15 community types:
- median household income (adjusted for inflation),
- homeownership,
- percentage of the population with a four-year college degree, and
- the Gini Index (a measure of economic inequality).
For each indicator, the ACP focused on three points in time:
- 2010,
- 2019 (the last year before the pandemic), and
- 2023 (the last year for which there is complete five-year data from the U.S. Census American Community Survey).
There are challenges in using these data. The American Community Survey collects figures over a five-year period, so the 2023 sample includes data that goes back to 2019 and includes the pandemic, but it’s a robust sample that can still reveal changes over that period.
Ultimately, the data draw a nuanced picture of who is “winning” and who is “losing” in the American economy. They also show how where you live may play a big role in how you see the U.S. economy in 2025.
Median Household Income
The headline in the story of median household income in the ACP: Every community type is doing better than it was in 2010 — and that includes adjusting the amounts for inflation.
To calculate these numbers, the ACP focused on the median household income in every county in each of the 15 community types, and then looked at median county in each, adjusting the amounts for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator.
While every kind of community saw an increase by this measure, increases were far from uniform.
The African American South saw the smallest increase, about $2,300, adjusted for inflation and less than 5% in terms of percentage. But the jump was three times higher in the LDS Enclaves, which saw the biggest percentage increase at 14.5%, perhaps due, in part, to the rapid growth of those communities, particularly around Salt Lake County, Utah. The Aging Farmlands and Big Cities also saw double-digit jumps, at 10.4% and 12.3% respectively.
Perhaps most interesting, the urban-rural split often seen in economic data (with urban places outperforming rural ones) doesn’t really appear. The Aging Farmlands and Big Cities are the least densely populated and most densely populated community types in the ACP, and they both saw big growth in income. Rural Middle America saw its median household income grow faster than the Middle Suburbs.
The data suggest the tumult that has shaken the economy in the past two decades is having complicated impacts, upsetting the idea of who’s winning and losing. That makes sense for an economy adjusting to a rapidly changing world.
But the impacts of the Covid pandemic are also apparent in these numbers.
Some community types saw the biggest part of their increase in the wake of the pandemic. That’s true for Graying America, Middle Suburbs, and Working Class Country. And the African American South and Military Posts saw their median household incomes decrease between 2010 and 2019 when adjusted for inflation. The entirety of their household income gains since 2010 came after the pandemic.
Meanwhile, other communities experienced their biggest increases in median household incomes before the pandemic. That group includes the community types that are more urban/suburban and that have higher incomes and more college degrees: the Big Cities, Urban Suburbs, and Exurbs.
The data suggest that the government payments during the pandemic and the inflation that followed it (and that angered many voters) actually helped communities with lower incomes — at least more than it helped communities on the top economically. That surprising bit of data may be because the wage pressures that came with inflation had a bigger impact in places where the wages were lower.
Homeownership
What has happened to homeownership, long the epitome of the American Dream, is mostly the inverse of the story of median household income. Notably, owner-occupied housing declined in 11 of the 15 community types from 2010 to 2023 amid a series of economic weaknesses, according to the ACP’s analysis. Since the Great Recession in 2007-2009, brought about by the subprime mortgage lending crisis, building new housing units slowed and never really recovered. Housing continues to be a wicked problem nationwide.
In the most populated community types — the Big Cities and Urban Suburbs — homeownership percentages actually declined three points in these 13 years, to 55% and 67% respectively. In Big Cities, characterized by multiculturalism, stratified environments, and prohibitively high ownership costs, residents don’t necessarily see owning a home here as a goal. These communities are also full of more young people who are just starting their lives and, usually, renting. In the Urban Suburbs, where owning is more common, it has also become harder as the cost of living and economic precarity have increased.
A range of community types experienced dips in home ownership from 2010 to 2019 and inched up after the pandemic receded, but in 2023 was still slightly below 2010 numbers. It’s impossible to know whether the pandemic and associated economic changes led to a temporary shift in the trajectory of homeownership. But federal data show that ownership numbers are falling again — and all community types appear to be experiencing such declines.
In the case of two community types sitting side by side in the South — the Evangelical Hubs and the African American South — the persistent racial divide in ownership is evident. In 2023, the mostly white Evangelical Hubs hovered around 76%, while the African American South sat at 68%. Over these 13 years, owner-occupied housing declined in both, but to different degrees. In African American South communities declined 1.7%, while ownership in Evangelical Hubs dipped 0.3%.
Aside from the Big Cities, College Towns, filled with transient residents, posted the lowest ownership rate at 62% in 2023, followed by economically depressed Native American Lands at 65%.
Where ownership increased in these 13 years was generally in more middle-class, homogeneous, rural communities: Graying America counties, which are scattered all over, Aging Farmlands in the Midwest, and LDS Enclaves in the interior West. The exception was the Native American Lands, which increased by 0.2%.
Aging Farmlands and LDS Enclaves had the highest rates at around 78% in 2023. Graying America was just behind.
Bachelor’s Degree
Meanwhile, as the public and private discussions heated up over the question and value of college, all 15 community types saw continual increases in the percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree or more between 2010 and 2023, with some types rising at greater levels than others.
The diploma-divide between urban and rural places was evident in this time as well — hovering around 20 points. By 2023, 41.9% of residents in the Urban Suburbs and 36.2% in the Big Cities had at least a bachelor’s degree. At the other end were low-income southern communities, the African American South and Evangelical Hubs, at 15.8%. Not far behind were Working Class Country communities primarily in Appalachia and the southeast at 17.6%, and Hispanic Centers and Native American Lands at 17.4%.
In these 13 years, degree increases were highest — above 7 percentage points — in the Big Cities, Urban Suburbs, and Exurbs, where white-collar industries are concentrated. Again, degree trends were lowest in rural locales, particularly in economically struggling and racially/ethnically diverse communities, including Hispanic Centers at 2.8%, the African American South at 3.3%, Native American Lands at 3.7%, and Working Class Country at 3.7%.
The average increase for all 15 types was 5.2% from 2010 to 2023. Eight types of various socioeconomic, generational, and geographic boundaries stood above the average, including Big Cities, College Towns, Exurbs, Graying America, LDS Enclaves, Military Posts, Middle Suburbs, and Urban Suburbs.
The Gini Index (economic inequality)
While the previous three indicators are clear-cut, economic inequality is more difficult to measure. The Gini Index (or Gini Coefficient) tries to do this by looking at the way income is distributed among the population of a place. The Gini creates scores between 0 and 1, where 0 represents complete equality and 1 represents complete inequality.
Looking at the 15 community types in the ACP, each one has inched a little more toward inequality since 2010, according to the Census data. However, the bigger increases mostly happened before the Covid pandemic. (Again, this measure was done by looking at the median county in each type.)
Every community saw its Gini score increase between 2010 and 2019. Some of the increases were bigger than others — the range was between .009 in the Native American Lands and .019 in the Hispanic Centers.
But in 2023, five community types saw small reductions in their median Gini score: Big Cities, Evangelical Hubs, Hispanic Centers, Urban Suburbs, and Working Class Country. To be clear, no drop was massive, but all were still noteworthy, especially when compared with the larger increases between 2010 and 2019.
Perhaps most interesting in those drops was the range of community types in which they appeared. Big Cities and Urban Suburbs are densely populated and home to a lot of residents with college degrees. Evangelical Hubs, Hispanic Centers, and Working Class Country are very different — largely rural with lower incomes and fewer degrees.
It’s hard to know what to read into those differences. Some may be due to the moment in time — temporary impacts of Covid relief funds.
The numbers in the Big Cities and Urban Suburbs make some sense as they tend to be home to more extreme wealth and poverty — that’s especially true of the Big Cities. But the figures for the Hispanic Centers and Working Class Country are harder to understand. Neither has an especially high median Gini score.
And it’s worth noting that the African American South, which has one of the higher Gini Index figures in the ACP, didn’t see any impacts post-Covid. Its median county score was unchanged. That may suggest that economic inequality in those communities is directly tied to their racial divisions.
Conclusion
Together the four indicators — median household income, homeownership, percentage with a four-year college degree, and the Gini Index — show a country not in dire straits but at an economic crossroads.