Economics professors may not draw many comparisons with private detectives and news reporters, but we share some common ground: All ply their trades by asking the right questions, gathering the right information and making sense of the facts.
Much to the delight of Joe Friday and the traditional news reporter, this first issue of the UW-Whitewater Stateline Economic Report asks and answers questions, in a straightforward format, on the economic issues most vital to this unique region.
The questions it asks are simple: Who are we? Where do we work? How much do we earn? Where do we live? While economics is not a recitation of the scene of the crime, it is a review of the facts. These facts reflect on the past and more recent history of our region. As a result, we ask readers to confront the positive facets of our life as well as the troubling. While investigating the wealth of the region, we also visit the less positive aspects of our economy. This is the goal of the Stateline Economic Report.
The inaugural issue reviews these basic concepts according to a contiguous land mass, generally along the Wisconsin/Illinois border. It includes Jefferson, Walworth, Rock, Green, and Lafayette counties. While this and future issues visit and will expand upon the ideas of who, how and where, it provides opportunities for the reader to focus their thoughts on issues such as “why” and where we’re headed.
We have found some strong trends in the data profiled in this report. For example:
- We illustrate that we are a growing and a diverse population;
- We find that we are transforming much of our economy away from manufacturing jobs and into service jobs;
- We discovered that the counties examined are poorer on average than the State of Wisconsin as a whole;
- And we’ve found that housing unit construction generally follows the predicted path of population growth, though housing appreciation is not uniform throughout the counties.
This quarterly publication is an outgrowth of the College of Business and Economics’ commitment to applied research that brings relevance and value to the economy of our region. The stateline region, especially in the more rural counties, currently do not have a public report of this kind that interprets important economic trends.
We trust that this and future issues will serve that purpose for you.
Russ Kashian,
UW-Whitewater Professor of Economics