FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 9, 2007

2007 Competitive City Report:

Louisville Education Attainment, Median Income Up; Regional Population Growth Stronger in Outer Counties

The 2007 Competitive City Report, released today by the Greater Louisville Project, highlights progress in the educational attainment of Louisville’s young adults and growth in the median income of its families.  It also pinpoints areas of concern including slow growth in professional and technical jobs that are a proxy for 21st Century economic strength and a continuing shift to outer counties in regional population growth.

The report is the subject of a community forum today at 10 a.m. at Glassworks, featuring special guests Louisville Metro Mayor Jerry Abramson and former Indianapolis Mayor William Hudnut, now senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington D.C.  The event is sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Louisville Branch.

The 2007 Competitive City Report is the second biennial “public report card” produced by The Greater Louisville Project, a non-partisan civic initiative organized by The Community Foundation of Louisville and sponsored by a consortium of foundations.  Its mission is to act as a catalyst, providing research, data analysis and civic dialogue to engage the community in a shared agenda for long-term progress.

The Competitive City Report is designed to provide Louisville’s civic leaders with data and information to spur action to move Louisville into the top tier among its peer cities in key areas including education, 21st Century jobs, and balanced regional growth.  It tracks Louisville’s progress against the Competitive City Agenda first outlined in the Brookings Institution report, “Beyond Merger: A Competitive Vision for the Regional City of Louisville” published in 2002.

“The biennial report cards provide the community with vital information and data necessary to understand the big picture of how Louisville stacks up against its neighbors and competitor cities,” said Carolyn Gatz, project director.  “It supports the goal of accelerating the pace of change to redefine Louisville as a skilled and educated community that claims its place in the top tier of American cities.”

Last summer, The Greater Louisville Project produced research that identified “Deep Drivers of Change,” key goals in the areas of education attainment, job growth, and balanced regional growth that are fundamental in their potential to move the Louisville region forward.

The 2007 Competitive City Report shows that in two of those critical areas – education attainment among young adults age 25-34 and median family income – Louisville Metro is on track to attain the “Deep Driver” goals by 2010.

Gains documented through data collected by the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau showed that between 2000 and 2005 Louisville moved from 12th to 8th among 15 peer cities outside of Kentucky in the percentage of young adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher.  A third of young adults in Louisville Metro now hold higher education degrees, an increase of more than ten percentage points since 1990.

Data on education attainment for the entire adult population in Louisville Metro shows a large number of residents who have earned some college credit but not yet graduated – demonstrating a ready market for potential efforts to draw former students back to complete their degrees.

On median family income, the data analysis performed by the Kentucky Population Research at the University of Louisville also showed that Louisville Metro moved from 12th to 8th among its peer cities on median family income, which rose from $33,226 in 1990 to $53,493 in 2005.

“These gains prove that we can achieve the ‘Deep Driver’ goals by 2010 if we come together as a community and ramp up efforts to improve education attainment, grow more 21st Century jobs, and reinvest in core neighborhoods in order to ensure more balanced growth across the region,” Gatz said.

The report also details Louisville Metro’s status on a variety of other key indicators of community health and prosperity, including housing, health, air quality, and regional growth.

With 25 Indicators displayed in bold, clear graphics, the report documents other key findings that include:

• While progress slowed in the second year of Every1Reads, the community-wide initiative to ensure that every child in the Jefferson County Public Schools is reading on grade level, the graphic mapping the percentage of children with solid reading scores by neighborhood found notable gains in areas of southern and western Louisville.
• Other indicators of K-12 education documented continued progress, but also showed the persistence of achievement gaps between racial groups that plague American education.  The high school drop-out rate rose in 2005 after several years of decline since the mid-1990s.
• The number of post-secondary degrees awarded throughout the region at all levels – from technical certificates to associate degrees and bachelor’s degrees – continued to increase. 
• Professional/technical jobs number 110,868 in Louisville Metro, but growth in that area was not sufficient to change Louisville’s rankings among its peer cities on that proxy for 21st Century economic strength.
• Construction of downtown housing has accelerated and is on track to meet or exceed the goal of 5,000 new units by 2010 – continued investments in downtown attractions and amenities such as upscale hotels and museums, also continued in downtown, creating the thriving urban environment that is critical for cities.
• While growth in the median family income was good news, the number of families and children in poverty also rose.  Increases in relative costs of housing and other essentials also underscored the need to invest in working families to ensure economic stability.
• Property values are increasing across the community, including revitalized areas of western Louisville and in some areas of southwestern Jefferson County where new subdivisions have reversed flat growth and population loss in recent decades
• A continuation of declining rates of homeownership among African-American families, even as the rate for white families continued to rise, raised a red flag – and ran counter to the trend in other cities, where the rate continues to climb for both groups.
• Population growth in some surrounding counties outpaced gains in Louisville Metro, reducing the core county’s share of the regional population from 60% in 2000 to 58% in 2005.  The gap in the number of residential building permits issued in Louisville Metro compared to the total for surrounding counties in the Metropolitan Statistical Area also widened.
• A new health indicator highlights stark disparities among areas of the community in life expectancy.

The Greater Louisville Project is sponsored by a collaboration of philanthropic foundations that includes The James Graham Brown Foundation, W.L. Lyons Brown Foundation, Brown-Forman, The C. E. & S. Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Community Foundation of Louisville, Gheens Foundation, and The Humana Foundation.

The 2007 Competitive City Report was prepared by the staff of The Greater Louisville Project with assistance from the Kentucky State Data Center at the University of Lousiville, and input from a variety of community groups and resources. The list of peer cities outside of Kentucky used for comparison purposes was identified through research by Paul Coomes of the University of Louisville.