Draft exploratory screen

Policy screen · Oregon · 36 counties

Oregon Socioeconomic Risk

An exploratory cross-check pairing Business Oregon's economic distress model with a broader demographic-fragility lens and a new public-goods viability subindex. Use it to surface counties whose long-run population picture, taxable-base capacity, and service-scale pressure rhyme with, or diverge from, the official distressed list.

Explore the chart Read findings Watch modeled movement Download concept paper Download data
Business Oregon distressed Not distressed Distress threshold (index = 1.0) Demographic watchlist (risk ≥ 55)

Reading the chart. A county sitting to the left of the vertical line meets Business Oregon's distress cutoff (lower index = weaker economic indicators). A county sitting above the horizontal line crosses the demographic-watchlist threshold built from forecast decline, aging, tract-level change, and outside-UGB exposure. Counties in the upper-left quadrant register on both lenses; counties in the upper-right are demographically fragile even though they are not on the official distressed list.

Note: Multnomah appears in the dataset but is not plotted here — the demographic risk index is unavailable due to incomplete PSU forecast coverage at this county geography.

New layer

Public-goods viability: where fiscal capacity and demographic risk overlap

The public-goods viability subindex is a draft supplemental screen that asks whether counties have enough taxable base, fiscal yield, and population scale to sustain basic public goods while demographic pressures intensify. It is not a proposed replacement for Business Oregon's statutory distress model.

Highest overlap

Grant, Harney, Union, Coos, Douglas, and Klamath score high on both demographic fragility and public-goods viability risk.

Fiscal-capacity watchlist

Jefferson, Polk, Malheur, Marion, Umatilla, Linn, and Lake show elevated public-goods viability risk even where demographic fragility varies.

Policy use

Use the screen as an early-warning overlay for housing, infrastructure, technical assistance, and Opportunity Zone 2.0 targeting decisions.

Recommendations before policy use

  • Keep the statutory economic-distress model and the demographic/public-goods screen distinct.
  • Publish component scores so practitioners can see which pressure is driving the result.
  • Stress-test the index annually with alternate weights, drop-one-variable tests, and rural/urban splits.
  • Add service-delivery indicators next, including EMS/hospital access, school enrollment, broadband, infrastructure backlog, and local match capacity.
Download concept paper PDF Download merged dataset Download JSON

Draft county screen

Hover for the fiscal-capacity profile. Click a county to load its full merged profile in the details panel.

High demographic + public-goods risk Public-goods viability watchlist Demographically fragile; fiscal base stronger Lower combined risk
Draft interactive screen comparing public-goods viability risk with demographic fragility risk. Points are shown for counties with complete fiscal-profile fields in the merged dataset. Scores are exploratory and should be treated as a policy-screening tool, not an official classification.

Modeled movement

How counties may have moved across the risk space

This 20-second animation shows a modeled path from 2005 to 2025, with one second representing one year. The axes remain fixed and the 2025 endpoints match the current merged dataset. The path lines are included to make the direction of movement easier to see.

Note: this is an exploratory modeled path, not an official annual reconstruction. Annual Business Oregon distress-index values were not available for every year, so intermediate movement is smoothed from available population, aging, tract-change, and final 2025 endpoint indicators.

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About this screen

A working draft for practitioners and policymakers

This site documents an exploratory effort to broaden how Oregon communities think about socioeconomic risk. Business Oregon's distressed-area model is a useful economic signal, but it does not directly capture slow-moving population decline, aging, tract-level weakness, housing-market stress, or rural service-risk indicators. This screen is designed to make those mismatches easier to see and discuss.

Process

  1. Recreated county and tract population-change views for Oregon.
  2. Layered PSU Population Research Center forecasts, Census estimates, ACS tract indicators, and outside-UGB exposure.
  3. Added Business Oregon's 2026 distressed counties model and compared the official economic lens with a broader demographic-fragility screen.
  4. Added a draft public-goods viability subindex using Oregon property-tax base, property-tax yield, tax effort, and population scale.
  5. Built this interactive version so users can hover, search, filter, and inspect county-level details.

Data access

Practitioners can download the working county dataset used in this screen. The file is provided for review and replication, not as an official state classification or final research product.

Download CSV Download JSON Concept paper PDF Method notes