We get it: you probably don’t follow each Scioto Analysis release with rapt attention. That is why at the end of the year I like to write a round-up of studies you may have missed from the year.
This was our fifth full year as a social impact policy analysis firm and we published nine large analyses on top of the smaller analyses we do throughout the year. Below is a roundup of the five analyses we at Scioto believe were the most impactful.
Pennsylvania’s Looming Climate Crisis: The Rising Price to Protect Communities from Extreme Heat, Precipitation, and Sea Level Rise
In 2021, Scioto Analysis started working with a coalition of local governments in Ohio to estimate the cost of climate change for local government budgets down the road. That culminated in the study “The Bill is Coming Due: Calculating the Financial Cost of Climate Change to Ohio’s Local Governments”, which made news throughout Ohio and even resulted in one of the sponsors of the research testifying in Washington D.C. during consideration of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.
This year, we followed that up with a study on the state of Pennsylvania. This time around, we zeroed in equity, finding that rural and high-poverty municipalities will have to pay more per capita due to climate change costs such as road maintenance and landslide protection. The study was covered by outlets such as CBS and the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.
Cost-Benefit Analysis of Ohio’s Recreational Cannabis Legalization
Over the past few years, Scioto Analysis has been doing a series of cost-benefit analyses demonstrating how cost-benefit analysis is carried out when done well. These cost-benefit analyses have covered topics ranging from the earned income tax credit to school closings for COVID-19 to urban tree canopy programs.
We do this as part of our social bottom line mission: we think policy analysis should be better in state and local government. For policy analysis to improve we must first show what good policy analysis looks like.
Over the summer, when we were considering a new cost-benefit analysis to conduct, we decided to study legalization of recreational marijuana in Ohio. Little did we know at the time that voters would be deciding on this question in November.
In October, we released our cost-benefit analysis, which found tax revenue generated by the proposed policy would generate benefits far in excess of the costs of legalization. The study was covered in a range of national news outlets, including Forbes, the Center Square, the Ohio Capital Journal, Crain’s Cleveland Business, Benzinga, Morningstar Marketwatch, Ganjapreneur, Green Market Report, High Times, and Marijuana Moment.
The Ohio Human Development Report
If policymakers want to know where they can take their community, they need to first understand where their community is. Alongside our work to promote better cost-benefit analysis, we have been conducting a multiple-year study focused on this question: how can we baseline well-being in a community?
We are using Ohio as a case study and have released a series of studies on inclusive economic growth (including our GPI 2.0 study, which came out earlier this year). We have also released studies on poverty and inequality.
This Fall, Scioto Analysis partnered with a group of students at Ohio State’s Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics to conduct a study on human development in Ohio. This study goes beyond dollars and cents and brings health and education indicators to assess the well-being of Ohioans.
For the first time, this study compares human development between racial groups in Ohio and across counties. We found that despite human development scores improving over time, there are disparities between white Ohioans and other groups as well as geographically across the state when it comes to income, health, and education.
Keep your eyes open: our goal is to round out this research in 2024 with a study focusing on a new frontier for well-being analysis in Ohio: subjective well-being.
Poverty in Franklin County, Ohio
Before the pandemic, a group of county leaders in Columbus’s Franklin County, Ohio were spearheading an ambitious project to fight poverty in the county. In 2021, the county hired Cleveland NAACP President Danielle Sydnor to lead the RISE Together Innovation Institute, a permanent center working to fight poverty in the County.
To create a baseline for their work, RISE Together partnered with Scioto Analysis in 2023 to conduct an ambitious study of poverty in the county. This culminated in the 2023 Poverty Snapshot–a study of poverty in Franklin County that covered topics ranging from prevalence, intermittency of poverty, interactions with employment, housing, and public policy, and poverty disparities.
A few of the findings of the report are as follows.
One in seven Franklin County residents lives in poverty.
Child poverty likely costs Franklin County $5.2 billion in economic activity annually in the form of reduced earnings, crime, health impacts, and child welfare impacts.
Black, Hispanic, and Asian residents of Franklin County all experience poverty at higher rates than white residents. Despite this, most people experiencing poverty in Franklin County are white.
Hundreds of thousands of Franklin County residents are lifted from poverty by federal programs, with the most significant impacts coming from Social Security, refundable tax credits, and economic stimulus payments.
Scioto Analysis will continue supporting RISE Together in 2024 as they look to use these findings to build the case for policies that reduce poverty throughout the county.
3C+D Economic Impact Study
Columbus has not had intercity passenger rail in half a century. A group of people under the banner of All Aboard Ohio are looking to change that.
In 2023, this group partnered with Scioto Analysis to conduct an economic impact analysis of expanding passenger rail in the state of Ohio. The “3C+D Corridor” would connect Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati with passenger rail service.
In our analysis, we found initial investment would generate over $100 million in gross state product and that annual economic impact of the corridor would generate tens of millions of dollars in gross state product.
We also found investment in the 3C+D corridor will create 1,100 to 1,200 jobs, most in the construction industry. Revenue generated from the nine stations due to ridership will support 170 to 320 jobs every year, primarily in the transportation and warehousing industry but also in a range of other industries.
Finally, we found that initial investment will generate $64 million to $66 million in new wages for workers across the country, which will raise $3.5 million to $3.7 million in state and local tax revenue.
More information on the study can be found on the All Aboard Ohio website.
This year, Scioto Analysis celebrated five years and we had our most impactful year yet. I am looking forward to a 2024 where we can make just as much impact in improving policy analysis at the state and local level and changing the way we measure progress and success.