A Community Indicator Project for Morehead-Rowan County, Kentucky

This project focuses on better understanding what factors contribute to community quality of life and economic development in Morehead-Rowan County in eastern Kentucky. While several factors have been identified in the literature and through prior student research, we still do not have a clear answer to the question “Why is this area so persistently distressed?” Moreover, there are very few studies in the literature that have focused on this question with particular reference to the eastern Kentucky region and/or our local community. What we have realized is that the greatest obstacle to answering this question is the lack of appropriate scholarly data to serve as the foundation for such studies. Therefore, we are working closely with officials and other leaders in our community to identify, collect, and analyze key data from local, regional, state and federal sources that they need to help them understand and improve the community’s economic condition and quality of life. Specifically, we are conducting a Community Indicator Project that will serve as the foundation for an ongoing initiative to collect and make available information that is useful to area citizens and community leaders as they work toward their shared long-term objectives for building a more sustainable community. The long-term objective of this research, which future students will continue, is to identify definitively the causal factors at work that account for the persistent distress of this community and the eastern Kentucky region