Recently, the Ohio State University released their Ohio Opportunity Index, a report that measures outcomes for residents across the state at the census tract level. Additionally, they released an interactive dashboard that helps visualize the data.
Here, I take a look at some of the top findings from the dashboard in Franklin county. Which census tracts are doing well, and where can policymakers find ways to improve peoples’ wellbeing.
Overall Opportunity
In Franklin county, the area with the lowest overall opportunity score was downtown Columbus. Low opportunity extends North of downtown into the South Linden neighborhood. The German Village neighborhood differs from its neighbors by having a relatively high opportunity score relative to the state as a whole.
Surrounding suburbs like Bexley and Grandview Heights have very high overall opportunity scores. The farther out suburbs also generally have higher overall opportunity when compared to downtown Columbus, though there are some notable exceptions, especially East of downtown.
Education Opportunity
In Franklin county, the general rule of thumb is that the closer to downtown you get the worse the education opportunity is. Poor education opportunities extend in the North in the neighborhoods between I-70 and I-270. To the west, areas of low opportunity are bounded by I-270.
One major exception to this rule is Bexley, which sits as an island of high education opportunity near downtown Columbus. The surrounding suburbs also once again areas of much higher educational opportunity when compared to downtown.
Employment Opportunity
One major bright spot for Franklin county is how it scores on employment opportunity. Almost the entire county except for a few census tracts near downtown are near the rank near the top of the state.
Generally speaking, employment opportunity in the state is higher near the major cities. The more rural parts of Ohio often have lower employment opportunity. In particular, the Appalachian region in the Southwestern part of the state scores poorly on this metric.
Transport Opportunity
For transportation opportunity, we see that most of the city center actually scores better than some of the surrounding suburbs. There is still a noticeable section of low opportunity tucked in the heart of downtown Columbus, but by and large the city has good transportation.
The suburbs in Franklin county are fairly mixed in their transportation scores. Most of the distant census tracts score poorly, but there are enough good scores mixed in to prevent this from being a discernible trend.
Health Opportunity
Franklin county scores slightly lower on health opportunity than any of the other metrics mentioned above. The main driver behind this is lower scores in the South suburbs. Broadly, we observe the same areas of low opportunity near the city center with the same neighborhood exceptions in German Village and Bexley.
It is not terribly surprising that many of these scores seem to be correlated with one another. Much of this can likely be attributed to local income and poverty rates. Hopefully, the high job opportunity score in the heart of Columbus might mean that some of these other metrics might begin to improve.