Dena Jo Squyres, like a typical 16 year-old girl, enjoys hanging out with her friends, shopping and playing softball. But Dena — a student at the Cherokee Nation’s Sequoyah High School in Oklahoma — can add entrepreneur, saver and spokeswoman to her list of after-school activities.

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Economic Development:
Of the People, By the People, For the People

Twenty years ago, CFED created the Development Report Card for the States to put forth a simple but radical notion: economies are fundamentally about people.  Healthy economies offer greater opportunities for everyone.  They should provide economic livelihoods, financial security, and an environment of opportunity for the people who live there.  State and local economic development efforts should foster creativity, productivity, and inclusion.

In the 1980s, “economic development” was frequently viewed as primarily about companies.  This outlook was further popularized by the many tools available that compared states’ “business friendliness.”  While these ratings captured some important points, they often emphasized “low cost” instead of “high value.”  The cheapest locations—those with low taxes and wages—got the best grades.  These tools encouraged policies to weaken regulation, even if that regulation protected things like the environment and worker safety.  An area’s good business rating could be damaged if workers were paid wages and provided benefits that were sufficient for their needs, even when public incentives were provided to their employers.

In 1987, the Development Report Card for the States offered a different way to assess state economies and a different way to think about economic development.  It continues to do so in 2007.  Measuring the standard of living and working in a state and how well the state is building foundations for future growth is just as important as how hospitable that state is to businesses.

Read more about why we produce the Report Card...

 
2007 DRC Overview

The Development Report Card for the States (DRC) uses 67 measures to provide a relative, state-by-state assessment of economic development, assigning grades in three main areas: Performance (economic climate for a wage-earner), Business Vitality (economic climate for a business), and Development Capacity (how a state is positioned for the future).

Download a four-page, PDF summary on this year's findings.

2007 DRC Honor Roll

The DRC compares how states perform relative to each other, rather than to an absolute standard. The honor roll recognizes those states that earn all As and Bs in the report card's three graded indexes: performance, business vitality, and development capacity.

Read more about the 2007 Honor Roll...

Use a dynamic tool for researchers, analysts, policymakers, and practitioners, to cross-reference any of the DRC's 67 measures with any combination of states.

Customize the 2007 DRC

Download DRC Data

All of the data used in the 2007 DRC are available in a downloadable Excel file.

Download the data used in the 2007 DRC

DRC Survey

As part of an effort to gather feedback from DRC users, CFED has developed a seven-question survey.

Take the 2007 DRC survey.