-: (upbeat music)
Well, as agriculture continues to cope with COVID-19,
speculation is looming over the status
of a rural communities.
University of Nebraska researchers
have developed the Thriving Index
comparing rural areas to similar regions
across the Upper Midwest.
Director of the UNL Bureau of Business Research
Eric Thompson joins us now.
And Eric thank you very much
for taking the time to chat with us
here this morning we appreciate it.
If you would bring us up to speed of course
on this Thriving Index and what it offers.
-: Well, the Thriving Index compares
eight rural Nebraska regions
with their peers around the Upper Midwest.
The goal of the Thriving Index
is to benchmark, to compare their growth,
and economic prosperity with their peers around the region.
And specifically we have 47 measures
where we compare things
such as economic growth, economic diversity,
education attainment, demographic renewal,
cost of doing business and quality of life.
-: So what are some of the findings
of the Thriving Index here in the midst of 2020?
-: Well, we found that Nebraska regions
tended to be strong in terms
of quality of life compared to their peers,
but they lagged a little bit
in terms of education attainment,
the cost of doing business
and in some cases, infrastructure.
-: So how can our rural communities
use the information gathered by the Index
and make it applicable?
-: Well, I think it's important to compare
with your peers at other rural regions
around the upper Midwest,
so it gives you a good overall measure
of how is your economy doing.
If you are at a region
where to find that it was consistently lagging its peers,
It might want to reassess its general approach
to economic development and economic growth.
However, if you're keeping up with your peers
or leading your peers,
we found two parts of the state, the Tri-Cities area,
as well as the Norfolk and Columbus areas
were well ahead of their peers.
In those cases, your economic development strategy
is working fairly well.
Another use is to find those specific measures
where your region seems to be lagging
and try to work on that.
So a lot of Nebraska regions
need to enhance their education attainment,
high school graduation rates,
getting people to attend higher education,
and come back to the region.
So it points out things like that
which you can specifically work on.
It's also useful for practical matters.
Some organizations will use the data
from the Thriving Index as part of their grant applications.
-: And Eric, taking into account the index this year,
were there may be any surprises
that sort of stuck out to you?
-: It is a little bit surprising
that results for education attainment,
Nebraska is a state that prides itself on education
has a great history with success and education.
I think what's going on there
is we're comparing ourselves
to a group of other States
that also do really well in terms of education outcomes.
So we're just a little bit behind
that highly successful group.
-: All right. Well, you can go on
to ruralprosperityne.unl.edu for more information.
Eric, thanks for joining us.
University of Nebraska Lincoln Bureau
of Business Research director,
Eric Thompson, joining us on location in Lincoln.