A Framework for Measuring County Economic Resilience

The study provides a framework to develop economic resilience index for West Virginia counties based on the premise that county economic resilience depends on its physical and human resources, structure and diversity of its economic base (employment and income diversity), entrepreneurial activity and business dynamics and scale and proximity (spatial issues). Using 17 indicators along four of the six proposed dimensions, a preliminary economic resilience index has been created for West Virginia counties between for the years 2000 and 2005. Geospatial maps are also developed to explore the evolution of the geographical patterns of economic resilience across time. The effectiveness of the index is further affirmed in correlation analyses where the contribution of economic resilience to unemployment reduction and employment growth is highly significant. These preliminary results are encouraging and appear to be pointing in a useful direction. The discussion in this study can serve as a starting point for building a broad-based, standardized, and consistent definition and measure of economic resilience.