The Three Wests The Three Wests: How does your county compare to other western counties? Research shows there are three distinctly different types of counties in the West, defined by their access to major markets and population centers. This web-based interactive tool will help community leaders make better decisions in several important ways: Learn more about what type of county you live in. Compare your county to a similar county or counties. Create a detailed county socioeconomic profile. Headwaters Economics has written a technical paper, The Three Wests: A New County Typology Based on Transportation (500K .pdf), where the concept of the Three Wests is tested statistically. The paper was submitted to the Journal of Rural Studies earlier in 2008.
Metropolitan	Connected	Isolated
Counties within a metropolitan statistical area, and neighboring counties within easy commuting distance to the city.	Counties in a rural setting, but connected to the rest of the world via airports with daily commercial service.	Counties in a rural setting, but isolated, where it is difficult to get to major population centers via road or air travel.

Map of the Three Wests

Click on map to view this map in a map viewer that allows you to zoom in to see more details.

Download High Resolution Map (1.8 Meg .jpg)

Characteristics that set the three Wests apart:

Metropolitan	Connected	Isolated
More young people	Neither young or old	More old people
Fast population growth	Slow in the 1980s, faster tin the 1990s, 2000s	Slow population growth
Fast income and job growth	The closer to the airport, the higher the per capita income, earnings per job	Slow income and job growth
More educated	Tend toward more educated	Less educated
Low dependence on retirement and other non-labor sources	Medium dependence on non-labor income	High dependence on retirement and other non-labor sources
High employment in services and manufacturing	A shift, from agriculture and resource industries in the 1980s, to higher emphasis on services in 1990s, 2000s	High employment in agriculture and resource industries

How else are they different?

Information Specific to Your County

Next, proceed to the next page to select a county to see how it fits into these classes.

Headwaters Economics
Mail: P.O. Box 7059, Bozeman MT 59771
Deliveries: 810 N. Wallace Avenue, Suite D, Bozeman MT 59715
Ray Rasker Ph.D. 406.570.7044 | Ben Alexander 406.599.7423 | Patty Gude 406.599.7425 | Chris Mehl 406.570.8937
Mark Haggerty 406.570.5626 | Julia Haggerty Ph.D. 406.600.1766 | Jeff van den Noort 406.599.1653

The photo of Denver is by Michael Stratton. The other banner photos are by Ray Rasker.