Greater Minnesota feels left behind. That's the headline version of the story that was reported one year ago in the wake of a state House election that produced a partisan map more divided between urban and rural regions than any in modern memory, as Republicans took a 72-62 majority.
Politicians have quibbled in the ensuing year over whether voters' rejection of DFL incumbents in 10 Greater Minnesota districts — and inner-ring suburban voters' spurn of Republican candidates — was deserved. But about this, there can be little disagreement: Metro and Greater Minnesotans have grown apart in recent decades in important ways — age, income, educational attainment, race and culture. Those trends are persistent; some may be accelerating. And those trends are complicating Minnesota's 157-year-old project in democratic self-governance.
Today and for the next two Sundays, Opinion Exchange will examine the state of Minnesota's internal union, past, present and future. It's not a disinterested look. The Star Tribune has long held that Minnesotans' willingness to function as "one state" — to aggregate their resources, pursue shared goals and provide public services at the state rather than local level — has been a key contributor to the prosperity and quality of life they enjoy.
Our view is that no part of Minnesota should be left behind. No part of Minnesota can reach its full potential unless the whole state does. And all of Minnesota would benefit from a narrower urban/rural divide.
Narrowing that gap must start with an understanding of what separates the two populations and what does not. Much has been made of the income gap between the two regions. The median household income gap is wide: nearly $14,000 in 2013, the last year for which data is available.
But nearly as large is the difference in cost of living between the metro area and many places in Greater Minnesota. Lower housing costs outstate compensate in many places for the difference in average wages, according to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). For example, by DEED's calculus, providing basic necessities for a family of two adults and one child requires an annual income of $55,845 in Hennepin County, compared with $42,065 in Blue Earth County — another nearly $14,000 gap.
To be sure, median figures mask substantial variations from community to community. Some Greater Minnesota residents likely have good reason to resent their low salaries compared with what comparable work pays in the Twin Cities.
But a wide disparity between metro and Greater Minnesota incomes is not new. The gap was at its narrowest in the late 1960s, grew wider in the 1970s and has been a fact of Minnesota life ever since. In fact, the difference in median household incomes between the seven-county metro area and the state's other 80 counties is narrower today in inflation-adjusted dollars than it was a decade ago. The reason: Metro incomes fell more sharply during the Great Recession than did incomes in the rest of the state, where agriculture served as a financial stabilizer during the downturn.
