Summary

The Sierra Nevada Wealth Index clearly indicates that the Sierra Nevada region is wealthy, and we have a precious opportunity to build upon that wealth. 

Rapid movements in communications and transportation have brought Sierra Nevada businesses ever closer to their customers worldwide, transforming our region’s economic prospects.  Responding to this reality, a new breed of economic pioneer is moving to the Sierra—inspired by the opportunity to live and raise families in small communities with easy access to the natural splendors of the Sierra Nevada.  At the same time, skilled young people and business owners, who might once have been forced to leave the region to find work or to expand their operations, are finding that they can remain in the Sierra and prosper.

This reality is reflected clearly in the 2005-2006 Sierra Nevada Wealth Index through indicators such as increasing economic diversity, rising personal incomes, exports, residential and commercial development. It is also reflected in polls of Sierra Nevada voters, which repeatedly demonstrate that the primary motivation for most people to live in the Sierra Nevada is the region's outstanding quality of life and exceptional natural environment.

But the 2005-2006 Index demonstrates a continuation of negative trends introduced in the last edition. First, the technological and demographic changes that have driven the Sierra Nevada's expanding prosperity have not come without costs: rapid loss of farmland, surprisingly high levels of water and air pollution, declining biodiversity, and unsightly sprawl. This diminishment of natural capital, if it continues, will ultimately drive financial capital from our region to places with effective long-term plans to safeguard their natural capital as population increases.

Secondly, the Sierra Nevada's expanding prosperity has not reached everyone or everywhere. In some counties, the growing number of children in poverty, declining personal incomes, low educational attainment levels, and outdated communications infrastructure show that people and communities are being left behind. These trends, occurring when much of California has experienced unpredent prosperity, only reinforces the need to invest in social capital in order to build regional wealth.

The web-based 2005-2006 Sierra Nevada Wealth Index illuminates trends we must address to ensure our region's long-term prosperity:

Increasing affordable housing units, investments in local communities, growing personal incomes, increasing the number of higher skilled jobs, higher paying jobs, and declining unemployment trends need to be supported and encouraged

Continued loss of farmlands and open space, increasing air and water pollution, declining biodiversity and rapid urban sprawl are all trends we should work swiftly to reverse
Growing childhood poverty, low levels of educational attainment, low public school enrollment, decreasing size and quality of hospitals, and sub-par health insurance coverage among residents demonstrate that some Sierra Nevadans are being left behind; these, too, are trends we must reverse

The Sierra Nevada Wealth Index is designed to help business leaders and policy makers develop integrated investment strategies to build wealth in the Sierra Nevada.  As we do so, we must put behind us, decisively and forever, the notion that our economy functions in a vacuum, sealed from society and the natural order. 

Our wealth is our total capital—social, natural, and financial—and our investment strategies must reflect this reality.  Only by monitoring trends in all three forms of capital and taking full account of those trends in our investment decisions, will we be able to build the wealth of our communities for ourselves and for our descendants.