Was Obama's presidency good for Minnesota?

The end of a two-term presidency always brings with it a lot of questions about what has, or hasn't, changed in those eight years.

We've selected a handful of metrics to give us a window onto the last eight years. This is by no means the full picture, nor are we trying to make any connection between President Obama's actions -- or inaction -- and what's happening here.

The data show us that quite a lot has changed in Minnesota during that time, but also that some things haven't.

Certainly, the topic that affected the most people during the past eight years was the recession. As Obama took office, the economy was declining, jobs were disappearing and the unemployment lines were swelling.

Minnesota's unemployment rate peaked in 2009, a few months after Obama took office, but started to recover earlier than the nation as a whole.

As the job recovery progressed in recent years, so did average personal income and other measures of economic well-being.

Personal income in Minnesota is higher than the U.S. average and has increased by about 13 percent over the rate of inflation since 2009, compared to 11 percent growth in the U.S. average.

The BEA reported that growth in health care, social assistance, finance and insurance industries were the leading contributors to the growth in total earnings in Minnesota.

But the economic recovery has not been even for all Minnesotans. Unemployment among black workers in Minnesota remains high at 8.8 percent, and Hispanics have an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent as of December.

Other metrics – such as median earnings, median household income and poverty – show that the stark differences between Minnesota's white population and its residents of color have either held steady or gotten worse.

In 2014, the state surpassed the milestone of having 1 million people of color living here, thanks to a strong birth rate among women of color and immigration from other states and abroad.

However, people of color still make up less than 20 percent of the state's population, and they mostly reside in the Twin Cities.

Minnesota has the 10th highest rate in the nation of the percentage of same-sex couple households that are married, with 52 percent, up from 14 percent when Obama took office.

It's important to point out that the U.S. Census Bureau has found that, particularly before the Supreme Court ruling, same-sex couples didn't always identify themselves as being married on census surveys, even if they were.

Minnesota's crime rate has been on a sharp decline since the '90s, along with the rest of the country's, and it continued to drop during the Obama years. In 2015 – the year of the most recently reported data – the index crime rate hit the lowest point since 1966. For context, someone born in 1966 would have turned 49 years old in 2015. Pilot episodes of "The Flintstones" and "Star Trek" aired in 1966. The Beach Boys released their seminal album "Pet Sounds," Bob Dylan put out "Blonde on Blonde" and John Lennon met Yoko Ono. It was a long time ago.

We can't write about the last eight years and not include health insurance. The Affordable Care Act, the hallmark of Obama's administration, resulted in huge increases in the number of people covered by health insurance. In data, this is usually represented in the reverse – the uninsured rate, or share of people who don't have health insurance.

The change in this uninsured rate wasn't quite as stark in Minnesota as elsewhere, though, because we started out with one of the lowest uninsured rates in the nation (about 9 percent in 2010). The most recent reported rate from the U.S. Census Bureau is 4.5 percent for Minnesota, the fifth-lowest in the nation.

The Vikings football team opened their new stadium last fall, but continued their unpredictability with a 5-0 start and an 8-8 finish.

The Twins baseball team also opened a new venue in 2010, but have struggled to get to .500 ever since, including one of the worst seasons ever last year with 59 wins and 103 losses

On the bright side, the Lynx women's basketball team has made it to the championship game five out of the last six years and won three of them. Last year, they narrowly lost to the Los Angeles Sparks, but finished the season with the league's best record.

Staff writer Andy Mannix contributed to this report.