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Useful Stats: Change in Per Capita Personal Income by State 1998-2003
One of the differences between technology-based economic development (TBED) and more traditional approaches to promoting economic growth is TBED's orientation that while all jobs may be important, they are not created equal. Traditional economic development may provide millions of dollars for financial incentives and infrastructure construction assistance for a shopping mall or "big box" retailer that provides many poverty-level wage positions or part-time jobs.
Investment in TBED, however, may direct the public's limited resources toward creating and sustaining companies requiring higher skilled employees, paying higher wages, and increasing the standard of living for its residents. But what constitutes a high wage job?
A measure for creating wealth is to improve an area's per capita personal income, the total personal income received by all persons in a given area divided by the population of that same area. Broadly speaking, jobs that pay more than the per capita personal income would be preferable to those paying less.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has released the 2003 figures for state per capita personal income. The BEA also revised data reported for earlier years. Change in personal income, measured in constant dollars, reveals that not all states are seeing the impressive figures published in many news accounts on the data.
SSTI has generated a table presenting the revised 1998 per capita personal income figures by state, the 2003 figures in current and constant 1998 dollars, the percent change from 1998 to 2003 in constant dollars, and the ranks for each category.
Notably, seven of the top 10 states based on the percent change in per capital personal income are all EPSCoR states. The exceptions are the District of Columbia (ranked first), Maryland (third) and Massachusetts (10th).
SSTI's table is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/050304t.htm
The BEA data is available at: http://www.bea.gov/bea/newsrel/SPINewsRelease.htm