Social & Economic Wellbeing in Challenging Times: the US Prosperity Index
An online webinar to explore how Iowa can emerge even stronger from the current health, social and economic challenges
About this Event
How can the Hawkeye State emerge even stronger from the current health, social, and economic challenges?
At the Legatum Institute, we have drawn on our 14 years of experience producing a global Prosperity Index to develop our United States Prosperity Index. Launched last year at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Index holistically and comprehensively measures how prosperity has been evolving across the 50 states of the Union and Washington D.C. It is a go-to source of key data trends and is freely available to help policymakers, legislators, and business and community leaders to make decisions that improve the prosperity of all Americans.
Arthur C. Brooks, Harvard Kennedy School Professor and former President of AEI, has described the United States Prosperity Index as: "One of the most comprehensive state-level comparisons of economic success, social progress and well-being ever created. It is needed now more than ever."
By providing a comprehensive picture of the situation in the U.S. before the coronavirus pandemic struck, the Index is a helpful lens through which to consider the various dimensions of the coronavirus and its effects – from transmission, susceptibility and severity, and the health response to fiscal resilience, digital connectivity, and social capital. The Index also provides context for the social unrest that has followed the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Over the past decade we have seen both institutional trust and social tolerance decline across the U.S.
The Index helps frame an agenda through which to address these challenges. By explicitly recognizing the interconnectedness of many different elements of prosperity, it allows users to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of states and counties across multiple dimensions. Combined with additional local insight and demographic data, this will enable a roadmap of targeted interventions to be developed.
The Legatum Institute, in partnership with the University of Iowa’s Public Policy Center, College of Public Health, and the RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis, presented a webinar and discussion to explore the findings of this state-by-state index, and previewed their forthcoming county-level analysis as they seek to assess how the whole of Iowa can emerge even stronger from these challenging times.
You can view the webinar here:
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Leslie Gannon at leslie-gannon@uiowa.edu.