Community Partnership Visas: How Immigration Can Boost Local Economies

APPENDIX B: Methodology for Determining CPV Community Eligibility

Project

Commission on Reimagining Our Economy

This appendix details the working group’s proposed formula to determine the Commuting Zones (CZs) eligible to participate in the Community Partnership Visa (CPV) program. Eligibility was determined using the following criteria:

Population growth: The 2010 county-level decennial population estimates were subtracted from the 2020 county-level decennial population estimates and divided by the 2010 county-level decennial population estimates.
Prime age (25–54) labor force participation rate: Constructed with the 2021 ACS five-year estimates for all persons between the ages of 25 and 54 in a county. Those who were working were coded as 1 and those who were not working were coded as 0, such that a simple mean of a county would produce the prime age labor force participation.
Median income growth: Median personal income for the 2011 ACS five-year estimates was subtracted from the 2021 ACS five-year estimates and divided by the median personal income for the 2011 ACS five-year estimates.
Local cost of living: The Economic Policy Institute’s cost of living data were used to determine the cost of living for a two-parent, two-child household in each county.

All of these measures were calculated at the county level and then aggregated to the CZ level by taking the mean of the values in the counties in a CZ, weighted by each county’s 2020 population. The allocation of counties to CZs was determined using calculations by geographer Christopher Fowler.

Eligibility was determined by a combined averaged labor force participation/median income growth cutoff, population growth cutoff, and cost of living cutoff. To create the averaged measure, the labor force participation and median income growth variables were scaled as a percentile rank from 0 to 100, added together and then divided by two. Percentile rank is calculated by taking an observation and counting how many more observations its value is greater than, dividing by the total amount of values minus one, and multiplying by 100. Any CZ that fell above the eightieth percentile or below the twentieth percentile of the scaled and averaged labor force participation/median income growth and fell outside the 20th–80th percentile boundaries for population growth was excluded. Finally, any CZ that had a cost of living in the eightieth percentile or higher was excluded.