Florida's Income Growth Outpaces Rest of Region
Rereading old predictions can be disheartening for many economists. But occasionally they can find a nugget of accuracy in forecasts that largely seem to have gone awry.</br></br>Ask Bernard Weinstein. The economist recently looked back at the rosy forecasts of the 1980 Commission of the Future of the South, a group of the region's business, political and educational leaders. The group studied 14 states from Virginia and Texas in an attempt to track and project demographic trends to help plan for education needs, as well as economic and infrastructure development.</br></br>Among the task force's particularly bold predictions: Southerners would finally make as much money as the rest of Americans by the year 2000.</br></br>Although it isn't turning out that way for most of the South, Mr. Weinstein told a September symposium at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Florida is on track to making his prediction come true there. Indeed, the Sunshine State's per-capita income of $24,104 rose a solid four percentage points to 99% of the national average, and Mr. Weinstein says it may well catch up by about the start of the millennium.</br></br>Meanwhile, for the South as a whole, per-capita income in the 14 states surveyed rose one percentage point to 90% of the U.S. average. (At the same time, the South's cost of living increasingly parallels the nation's, so lower costs are less likely to offset lower income.)