According to data from the 2013 Opportunity Index, released this week, overall opportunity in the United States has increased by 2.6 percent since 2011, the first year the index was produced.
One of the drivers of that uptick: increasing rates of students graduating on time from high school (from 74.7 percent in the 2011 Opportunity Index to 78.2 percent in the latest one) and rising proportions of adults ages 25 and older with an associate or more advanced degree (from 35.4 percent to 36.3 percent).
The index, a measure that takes into account educational attainment, as well as factors like volunteerism and access to medical care, healthy food, and the Internet, aims to show communities how they stack up in offering the kinds of services and opportunities necessary to help poor or unemployed people get ahead.
Three of the 16 indicators that make up the index relate to education, but the one indicator of those 16 that most closely correlates with a state’s or community’s overall Opportunity Index score is the one that measures the proportion of what the index calls “disconnected youth"—people ages 16 to 24 who are neither in school nor employed. For the 2013 index, the researchers found 5.8 million “disconnected” 16- to 24-year-olds, out of a total number of 39.7 million. That’s 14.6 percent, a slight increase from the 14.5 percent reported in the 2011 index. In 10 of the country’s 25 largest metropolitan areas, the proportion of young people considered “disconnected youth” exceeded the national average.
That measure “has a larger impact on a community’s opportunity score than any other,” says Mark Edwards, executive director of Opportunity Nation.
Reducing that proportion is “one of the biggest levers to increase opportunity,” says Mr. Edwards.
Some of the disconnected youth have dropped out of high school, some are unemployed high-school graduates, and some are victims of a dysfunctional foster-care situation, says Mr. Edwards.
During the Great Recession, unemployment has been lower among people with more education. But Mr. Edwards says other information makes clear that the high incidence of “disconnected youth” was not a product of the recession but rather part of a longer trend. “The post-2001 recovery worked for just about everybody except disconnected youth,” he says.
The index shows national unemployment shrank by 20 percent between 2011 and 2013, but it also shows that as a country, the United States has grown poorer, with 49 states reporting an increase in poverty and 45 experiencing a drop in median household income. The only indicator that went up in all 50 states and the District of Columbia was access to the Internet.
Information on state scores and rankings, along with maps showing county-by-county ratings, can be found at the Web site of Opportunity Nation, the organization that produces the index in collaboration with Measure of America, an arm of the Social Science Research Council.
Opportunity Nation says because of the nexus between disconnected youth and overall scores, it has begun focusing its attention on programs and policies at the state and national level that create stronger pathways to get young people to education and jobs. In concert with a coalition of 275 organizations around the country, it has begun advocating for things like a new federal program to encourage low-income children to save for college; Opportunity Nation backs a bill to create “American Dream Accounts,” which was introduced in the U.S. Senate in May.
The index is in only its third year, but Mr. Edwards says he’s encouraged by the way it’s been used. In Iowa, for example, a coalition that includes local foundations, businesses. and Des Moines Area Community College is using the index, and its scores for Polk County, to track the county’s progress in expanding job training and improving other factors that could raise the score. (The county’s B-minus grade on the index stayed the same between 2013 and 2011, although its actual score inched up to 55.55 from 55.54.)
Rob Denson, president of the college, says it’s because of that score, and more particularly Opportunity Nation’s findings on rates of disconnected youth in his region (10.3 percent in the 2013 index, up from 9.2 in 2011), that the college is spearheading a new employment program for inner-city teenagers starting next summer that will combine job experience with educational programs, including information on how to navigate college. Without that, “I would be focusing on 18-year-olds” and older prospective students, says Mr. Denson, and not a program aimed at younger people.
The index, he says, highlighted to him that “community colleges don’t exist in a silo,” while also forcing schools and other institutions in the region to look honestly at themselves.
Disconnected Youth in Largest U.S. Metro Areas
Percentage of young people ages 16 to 24 not enrolled in school or employed, 2011
| Total youth | Percent “disconnected” |
New York-Newark-Jersey City | 2,437,627 | 14.5% |
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim | 1,764,614 | 14.6% |
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin | 1,179,794 | 14.1% |
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington | 859,163 | 14.9% |
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington | 780,087 | 14.3% |
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria | 774,851 | 11.3% |
Houston-the Woodlands-Sugar Land | 769,999 | 14.1% |
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell | 724,849 | 16.6% |
Boston-Cambridge-Newton | 672,378 | 9.2% |
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach | 667,094 | 16.0% |
Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario | 620,453 | 18.8% |
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale | 544,484 | 17.2% |
Detroit-Warren-Dearborn | 500,469 | 17.4% |
San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward | 477,607 | 12.3% |
Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington | 474,577 | 9.5% |
San Diego-Carlsbad | 454,907 | 12.2% |
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue | 437,126 | 13.2% |
Baltimore-Columbia-Towson | 348,981 | 14.3% |
St. Louis | 346,345 | 14.2% |
Denver-Aurora-Lakewood | 325,729 | 13.1% |
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater | 313,578 | 15.8% |
Pittsburgh, PA | 308,747 | 12.6% |
Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia | 304,358 | 17.3% |
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro | 287,637 | 17.0% |
San Antonio-New Braunfels | 286,487 | 15.5% |
Source: Measure of America