A multi-sector, longitudinal analysis of institutional carrying capacity in Oregon's rural communities.
Rural Oregon's schools, employers, hospitals, and housing markets are not failing independently. They are failing together — connected by a shared population base that is shrinking, aging, and redistributing toward urban centers faster than any single agency's program can track.
This research series applies a consistent hypothesis-testing framework across four sectors to answer a single question:
Is this community losing the population base and age balance needed to sustain schools, employers, health care, housing markets, civic institutions, and local services?
Each module produces sector-specific findings and feeds a unified vulnerability analysis — identifying which communities are approaching the institutional thresholds beyond which decline becomes self-reinforcing, and where coordinated, place-based intervention is still cost-effective.
Enrollment trajectories, student outcomes, and per-pupil expenditure dynamics across 207 Oregon school districts, 2015–2023. Tests whether fragility predicts outcomes, whether spending predicts outcomes, and whether declining enrollment drives a self-reinforcing doom loop.
Read the moduleTransaction volume, price volatility, vacancy rates, and ADU trends by county and urbanization tier. Tests whether housing market stress precedes or follows population loss, and where markets have already crossed viability thresholds.
Estimated release: 2026Provider FTE trends, hospital proximity, uninsured rates, and critical access hospital viability by county. Tests whether provider departure follows the same doom loop dynamic documented in education.
Estimated release: 2026Labor market depth, wage trajectories, and employer concentration by tier. Tests whether wage decline and labor market thinning are leading or lagging indicators of community viability loss.
Estimated release: 2027The synthesis report — combining findings across all four sectors into a unified Oregon Rural Viability Index — will be released following completion of all modules. To be notified when new modules are available, get in touch.