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Each year, the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department (OECDD) updates its list of distressed communities. The most recent update reflects changes resulting from a revised methodology used to determine whether cities or counties are distressed. Since the "distressed" designation has implications for economic development projects, loans and grants, the department offers this overview of the updated list and the new methodology used. Cities and counties are encouraged to contact the OECDD with specific questions or concerns about the list.
Background
In the late 1990s, the Oregon Legislature passed Senate Bill 932 directing the department to give priority to geographic areas designated as distressed. During the 2007 legislative session this statute was revised in Senate Bill 250 which directed the department to: ". . . focus on Oregonians in communities that are rural, economically distressed or lack diverse employment opportunities . . ." The bill defines "economically distressed" as "a county, city, community or other geographic area that is designated as a distressed area by the department, based on indicators of economic distress or dislocation, including but not limited to unemployment, poverty and job loss."
The new list published here is the update for 2006 and will be in effect until the next update in late 2007. OECDD will publish updated lists every year in December.
Due to technical and data problems with the methodology used in the past to determine distressed status, the current list is based on a revised methodology. The revision was carried out to improve consistency of the results and reduce data problems that have often hampered updating the list periodically as required. The revised methodology is explained below and uses some of the factors used in the old methodology.
Methodology
To determine whether a county is distressed or not, four factors were used to create an index for the county. These factors are:
- Employment change (over the most recent period for which data is available)
- Average wage change (over the most recent period for which data is available);
- Annual unemployment rate relative to state (latest year for which data is available); and,
- Per capita personal income relative to state (latest year for which data is available).
The index is a composite of these four factors. A county is distressed if its index is less than 1.0 and non-distressed otherwise. If a county is distressed, all of its parts are considered to be distressed. An index less than one shows that, on average, economic conditions worsened for a county relative to the state over the period under consideration.
To determine whether an incorporated city or sub-city area in a non-distressed county is distressed, four factors were used:
- Poverty rate (i.e., percent of the population in poverty)
- Per capita personal income
- Percent of population aged 25+ with college education
- Unemployment rate
If three or more of these factors were worse than a threshold value, then that place was identified as distressed. The threshold value is a representative value for each of the four factors in distressed counties.
Petition for evaluation of distressed status
Only incorporated places have been evaluated in this year's determination. But any community (incorporated or otherwise) may petition the OECDD to do an analysis of its economic status relative to distressed factors for purposes of inclusion on the distressed communities list. For such petitions to be honored and the analysis to be performed, data for that community must be available in the U.S. economic census. As the smallest area for which census data is available is the census tract, analysis for areas smaller than a census tract cannot be performed.
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