The American Dream Prosperity Index (ADPI) offers a set of unique and holistic insights into what is driving and constraining change across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and nearly 1,500 counties across 17 selected states. It is built on 230 distinct measures from over 90 diverse sources from across the U.S. grouped under 49 themes. It highlights which challenges are shared across the United States, but also pinpoints where problems are local, shaped by a wide variety of societal and economic issues.

In particular, the 2022 Index finds that:

• While U.S. prosperity rebounded post-pandemic in 2022; looking forward inflation may threaten further progress.
• S. prosperity increased across America in all states in varying degrees, except in North Dakota; but it remains unequally distributed within states.
• High and rising gun crime, across all but six states, is impacting Americans’ individual sense of their security.
• Mental health levels have weakened in all states.
• A continuing decline in social cohesion and group relationships at all levels of America’s society risks impeding a common resolve to addressing the barriers to prosperity.

The Index is already being used by a range of state and locally based organisations to effect change across the country, from informing the Community Needs Assessments of rural hospitals in Montana to reinforcing arguments for legislative changes that can reduce high healthcare costs in Mississippi and helping to shape the strategic priorities for a range of community foundations and civic institutions. Our ambition is that state and local governments, business leaders, investors, philanthropists, and civil society leaders across the U.S. will use the Index to help craft their agendas for growth and development, and that others will use it to hold them to account.