Indiana at a Glance: County Trends, 2025 Edition provides an overview of macro socioeconomic and demographic trends based on county-level data in ten-year periods in Indiana, the upper Midwest region, and the nation. Analyzing data primarily from 2013 through 2023, this book presents information that contextualizes the design and implementation of specific policies enacted by elected officials and community leaders, and reveals the impact these initiatives have on the public.
Inspired, in part, by the United States Department of Agriculture's Rural America at a Glance reports, as well as the author's more than twenty years of work in the field, this study makes use of gap analysis to glean valuable insights into how specific socioeconomic patterns relate to larger regional or national trends. It also offers a fuller picture of community economic development planning, allowing community stakeholders to better discern unique opportunities and challenges from macro socioeconomic and demographic noise.
Accessible to scholars and nonacademics alike, Indiana at a Glance is meant to assist community leaders and residents who wish to have a firmer grasp of the socioeconomic and demographic landscape of their communities as they attempt to plan, design, implement, and evaluate their policies and initiatives or simply better understand their communities. The content and analysis supplied in this book will be updated every five years to ensure the most current data is available in order to align with the temporal "horizon" under which community economic development practitioners and policymakers frequently operate.