A new statewide dashboard is giving Tennesseans a clearer picture of how urban and rural communities are performing, and where there’s room for improvement.
The State of Our Counties dashboard from the nonpartisan think tank ThinkTennessee provides critical data from all 95 counties – 78 of which are considered rural – compiling more than 92,000 data points across nine key issue groups.
The think tank's research director, Chris Candelaria, said the tool highlights areas of progress, such as declining poverty in about two-thirds of the state's counties. But he noted Tennessee ranks 42nd out of 50 states nationally in terms of poverty.
"When we say that you know poverty is declining, that doesn't mean that it's necessarily solved," he said. "So, for example, if a county is going down from like 22% poverty to 20% poverty, that's progress, but someone still might say 20% poverty is still high."
He noted that the dashboard also tracks the ALICE threshold, a measure from United Way that stands for “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed." It refers to families who earn wages above the poverty level but below the cost of living, and still struggle to make ends meet. About 44% of Tennessee households fall into this category, offering a clearer view of how many are just one setback away from financial hardship.
The dashboard also outlines urgent challenges such as burdensome rent and health-care costs. Rents remain steep for both urban and rural renters. On average, 44% of Tennessee renters spend at least 30% of their income on housing. Candelaria said this “cost-of-living squeeze” reflects the broader pressures working families are facing.
"This kind of includes the renter burden as well as health-care costs," he said, "and these are both, as I would name them, affordability issues hitting working-class households the hardest."
Candelaria noted that the dashboard also tracks local economic data. It highlights each county’s major industries, their average annual wages, and where wage growth is happening most rapidly. The tool also lets users see how local wages compare with state averages, and in some counties, multiple industries pay above-average wages relative to Tennessee's overall average.
Source: Public News Service
