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Most Inland Empire residents aren’t pleased with their present living circumstances and say they are struggling to get by, a pair of recent reports published by UC Riverside have found.
Only 41 percent of the people surveyed described themselves as “thriving, according to Building Common Ground Through Data: Insights On Vital Conditions in the Inland Empire.
Conversely, 53 percent described themselves as “struggling,” and six percent of the respondents said their lives consist mostly of “suffering,” the report found.
In the well-being category, the Inland Empire was about even with Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Slovakia, the Eastern European country formerly know as Czechoslovakia, the report states.
That’s a somewhat harsh assessment, but the 56-page document is a fair appraisal of the Inland Empire that does a good job of assessing more than economic issues, said Paul Granillo, president and chief executive officer of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership.
“It certainly shows that if you’re not a high-income earner, you’re going to have stress in your life,” Granillo said. “But it also shows the sense of community that a lot of people who live in the Inland Empire feel, and I think that’s important. People here know the Inland Empire is a good place to live, and a good place to raise a family.”
The study was conducted by UC Riverside’s Center for Community Solutions, a division of the school’s School of Public Policy. It deals with healthcare, education, housing, community identity and other basic issues.
A summary of the report, which was released in September, called many of its findings “sobering.”
“Overall, the Inland Empire lags behind the United States with respect to self-reported well-being, but the region’s unusually strong sense of local connection offers hope and a foundation to build upon,” said Justine Ross, executive director of the community solutions center, in a statement.
The report is based on interviews conducted with 2,381 adult residents of Riverside and San Bernardino counties between June 17 and July 2. To put the local numbers in perspective, the report includes data from the Inland Empire by the American Community Survey, which is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The UC Riverside researchers used an information-gathering method called the Cantril Ladder. Developed in the 1960s, that system is used worldwide to measure life satisfaction. Participants are asked to rate their quality of life, and how it might be in the future, in multiple areas on a scale of zero to 10.
Researchers used the data to put each respondent into one of three categories: thriving, struggling, and suffering. The study found both positive and negative aspects regarding the Inland region’s state of mind.
Well-being in the Inland region is closely linked to household income.
Only 30 percent of the households earning $20,000 or less see themselves as high well-being. By comparison, 64 percent of the households that earn $140,000 or more said they consider themselves to have high well-being.
Rates of suffering fall sharply as income increases: roughly nine to 10 percent at the lowest income levels, compared with one to two percent at the highest levels.
“Well-being in the Inland Empire varies by age, race, education, and income,” the report states. “Younger adults, lower-income households, and those with less formal education are more likely to (describe themselves as) struggling or suffering.”
The Inland Empire has a smaller percentage of residents who say they are thriving than the nation as a whole, according to the report.
Not all of the findings were negative:
- Median earnings in nearly all employment groups in the Inland region grew between 2015 and 2023;
- About one third of those surveyed said they feel a strong personal bond with their home community;
- The Inland Empire has a respectable amount of civic engagement, but most of that takes place among people with higher incomes. Only 24 percent of the people who described their household as “suffering” said they participate in a high level of civic activity.
- Among people who describe themselves as thriving, that number was 58 percent.
- About one-third of those surveyed said they have “a strong sense of belonging” within their local community, which is higher than the national rate. The study suggests that thriving and civic participation reinforce each other.
“We often talk about income as if it’s the strongest factor linked to well-being, but our study shows belonging and civic engagement are just as strongly correlated,” Ross said in the statement. “No single measure, like income or education, fully captures well-being, but strong social connection and civic participation emerge as playing a powerful role.”
In the companion study, Women and Well-Being, more than 58 percent of the 1,000-plus women surveyed said they were struggling, six percent said they were suffering, and less than four in 10 described themselves as thriving.
Healthcare and education were also major concerns.
Nearly 40 percent of the respondents who didn’t have medical insurance said they’re uninsured because the cost is too high, and 16 percent said they don’t have a high school diploma. Those without a high school diploma had an annual median income of $26,000.
On the positive side, 93 percent of respondents said they have stable housing, and 88 percent said they believe their neighborhood is a safe place to live.
That both studies found a large number of Inland Empire residents who described themselves as struggling is not surprising.
“It’s nothing new,” Granillo said “The way to change that is to increase our bachelor’s degrees, and our associate’s degrees, because that leads to better jobs, and better jobs lead to higher incomes. That’s been a constant problem for the Inland Empire, and we need to keep working to fix that.”
