University of Iowa Professor Stephen Bloom set off a firestorm of controversy late last year with a piece published in the Atlantic criticizing rural Iowans as “the elderly waiting to die, those too timid (or lacking in educated) to peer around the bend for better opportunities, an assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth, or those who quixotically believe, like Little Orphan Annie, that ‘The sun’ll come out tomorrow.’ “
But data compiled by UI students shows Hawaii actually best fits the description Bloom makes of the Hawkeye state. The university’s Iowa Community-Integrated Geography Organization pulled demographic information from all 50 states:
• Percentage of population over 65 (American Factfinder, 2010)
• Number of hunting licenses sold as a percent of population (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 2011)
• Treatment admissions for meth use per state normalized against total admissions (Substance Abuse & Mental Health Data Archive, 2009)
• Percentage Christian (Pew Center survey, 2008)
• Percentage of impaired stream lengths (Environmental Protection Agency)
It turns out Iowa ranks fifth on the Bloom Index — behind Hawaii, South Dakota, Kansas, and Montana. Maryland, Vermont, and New York fit the index least.
Methodology: The Bloom Index contains five different indicators that were chosen to most accurately represent Stephen Bloom’s discussion available at a national scale: The percentage of per state population over 65 (data from American Factfinder, 2010); the number of hunting licenses sold as a percent of state population (from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 2011); treatment admissions for methamphetamine use per state normalized against total admissions (from the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Data Archive, 2009); percentage Christian (from a Pew Center survey, 2008); and percentage of impaired stream lengths (from the Environmental Protection Agency). Each indicator’s value is normalized to a 0-1 range based on the lowest and highest value in each category. The indicator values are then summed for each state and averaged to reveal the Bloom Index.
About ICIGO: Formed in the spring of 2011, the Iowa Community-Integrated Geography Organization (ICIGO) is a University of Iowa student group that seeks to provide spatial analysis, mapping services, and geographic support for not-for-profit and academic institutions in the state of Iowa with a particular focus on offering applied undergraduate research and promoting sustainable communities.
