Valley must learn to build wealth, study urges

By Don Shilling

Community leaders will begin implementing its suggestions.

A study to be released Tuesday suggests the Mahoning Valley adopt new techniques to build wealth among residents.

About 50 community leaders are expected to gather at McMenamy’s Banquet Center in Niles to hear about the study, sponsored by the Raymond John Wean Foundation.

Wean, with aid from JP Morgan Chase and Turning Technologies, hired Corporation for Enterprise Development, a nonprofit agency in Washington, D.C., to conduct the study.

One recommendation is to find ways to meet the banking needs of people without adequate banking services. Joel Ratner, president of the Wean Foundation, said the study points to programs elsewhere that help people obtain financing without using payday lending.

A second recommendation is to provide better support for small businesses. The study found the region is doing well at developing “microentrepreneurs,” which are businesses with five or fewer employees, but needs better ways to help those businesses grow.

A third recommendation is to create “children development accounts.” These are savings accounts that provide matching funds to children who save money.

Ratner said the program likely would target a segment of the population, such as urban youth. The goal would be to encourage children to be savers as they grow up, he said.

Last, the study suggests tying career development efforts to jobs that are growing locally and that pay a decent wage.

Ratner said those attending Tuesday’s meeting will be asked to begin talking about how to implement the study’s findings.

He said the idea for the effort came from the realization that the community needed a fresh angle on how to improve itself. The effort ties into a school of thought that asset-building is key to building up a community, he said.

To develop the study, Corporation for Enterprise Development interviewed about 70 people in the community, including residents, politicians, educators, business people and social-service leaders. Ratner declined to say how much the study cost.

He said the study was similar to reviews that the agency does on statewide efforts to build asset wealth among residents. It ranks each state on a variety of factors, such as state support for college education and access to banking services. Ohio received a C grade in the latest report.

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Study facts

Some findings from the Wean study on the Mahoning Valley:

Nearly one-third of local households live below poverty level, a group that has grown 5 percent every year since 2000.

The area is becoming even more ethnically diverse with a Latino population of nearly 7 percent.

Between 30 percent and 40 percent of all local households are “asset poor” and may not even realize it.

The small-business ownership rate locally is less than half that of Ohio at large. Only 10.4 percent of Youngstown area adults have a four-year college degree, less than half of the statewide rate.

Source: Raymond John Wean Foundation