Author: Charles Hayslett
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Mapping the rise and fall of Georgia per capita income performance
In my last piece, I summarized some of my recent research into the per capita income (PCI) “cold case” I’ve been noodling over for the past year or so and promised several follow-ups. This is the first of those. As a starting point, I thought it might be useful to spread some key data points…
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More TIGC lessons from the 2022 governor’s race
Further notes from a deep (and continuing) dive into the results of Georgia’s 2020 General Election: Georgia is as divided politically as it is economically, educationally, and health-wise — and those divisions have all taken shape over roughly the same time period. I’ll start here with a little history lesson. In 1990, Lt. Governor Zell…
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Early TIGC lessons from Tuesday’s gubernatorial election
Yesterday’s gubernatorial election showed us at least a couple of things, neither of which was particularly surprising. The first is that there is no apparent reason for Democratic candidates to venture into rural Georgia again. To her credit, Stacey Abrams, the party’s gubernatorial nominee for the second time, made a game effort in rural Georgia,…
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A first look at some new educational attainment data for Georgia’s counties (it ain’t pretty)
Lately I’ve been wallowing around in about a dozen different datasets and working on at least as many posts without getting any of them finished. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there are moments when I miss having an editor yelling at me. So, now I’ve started yelling at myself and have given myself…
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New record of 123 Georgia counties reported more deaths than births in 2021; statewide gap between births and deaths narrowest on record
The number of Georgia counties recording more deaths than births jumped again in 2021, due largely to a rising death toll that owed primarily to a combination of Covid-19 fatalities and lethal drug overdoses, according to data published Friday by the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH). The total number of Georgia’s 159 counties reporting…
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Chapter III in my ongoing post-mortem of Georgia’s PCI performance from 1980-2020
Late last year, I posted two pieces about Georgia’s per capita income (PCI) performance. I hadn’t intended to do that. My original objective had been to take a quick look at a new release of 2020 PCI data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), knock out a quick one-off, and move on. But…
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KFF’s national analysis matches TIGC’s Georgia findings on the Red-Blue Covid-19 divide
Research spotlighting the differences in how Red and Blue America are responding to virtually every aspect of Covid-19 continues to pile up: the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) went up yesterday with a report declaring that its polling had found “that political partisanship is a stronger national predictor of vaccination than other demographic factors.” I haven’t…
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Gauging the Gap between Metro Atlanta and the rest of the state on premature death rates
I’ve spent a good part of the summer taking a deep dive into several pots of economic and education data with an eye toward fleshing out a couple of chapters in the book version of TIGC. As a result, I’ve been neglecting the blog. Then, in mid-August, I got a call asking me to make…
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Broadband internet expansion no silver bullet for rural Georgia
(Editor’s Note: This column was initially published in today’s edition of the Georgia Recorder. It was submitted as a counterpoint to a piece that ran earlier this week in the Recorder.) Four years ago, I spoke to the opening day session of the House Rural Development Council about my research into the alarming decline of…
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Forget the “two Georgias,” welcome to Massassippi
I can’t remember whether he wrote it or said it, but years ago the legendary Atlanta Constitution editor Bill Shipp opined that if you lifted Metro Atlanta out of Georgia, what was left would be worse off than Mississippi. I remember it because I’m from Mississippi and my first reaction was: Really? There might be…