‘Distress Index’ Measures Recession’s Impact on Local Families

Just how bad is this recession — and how is it affecting families in high cost-of-living areas like the Bay Area? A new ‘Distress Index’ can shed some light.

The Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, in partnership with New America Media and the San Francisco Foundation, just released “Measuring Economic Distress in San Francisco,” an index that monitors 11 indicators of distress, including bankruptcies, CalWORKs enrollments, foreclosures, unemployment, food bank pantry visits, and other measures where data are updated more frequently than on an annual basis.

The index assesses San Francisco’s distress for the last 10 years — primarily comparing the dot-com bust to the recent recession. Although the index is limited to the city/county of San Francisco, researchers noted that they hope other communities will replicate the idea.

Overall, researchers found that the distress index in San Francisco has been increasing since 2000. It also notes that foreclosures, food stamps applications, and homeless assistance are all higher during this recession than they were during the dot-com bust. For all results, visit http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/_media/pdf/cpr_papers/San_Francisco_Distress_Index.pdf

Interested in data about family economics for your community? We have several indicators on kidsdata.org.

Tags: Data Projects

Posted by Felicity Simmons

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 21st, 2010 at 2:09 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.