‘Quality Of Life’ Focus Of Barn & Business Breakfast Speaker
March 8, 2023 at 12:03 a.m.
‘Quality Of Life’ Focus Of Barn & Business Breakfast Speaker
By Jackie [email protected]
The event allows agricultural and other leaders to hear about community issues. The breakfast returned Tuesday after a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Emily Wornell, research assistant professor at the Indiana Communities Institute at Ball State University, said when people think about economic growth, they think about jobs.
Wornell said there are two different kinds of jobs: global and local. Global jobs can be done anywhere in the world like call centers and manufacturing. Local jobs require a large population center such as healthcare, financial services, local baristas, etc.
The problem with bringing in jobs is a lot of focus is on bringing in local jobs. However, Wornell said, “We’re not gaining any of those jobs,” and because those jobs are global, they’re going other places.
Another problem is the thought people follow jobs. In reality, she said, jobs follow people. People choose a place where they want to live based on the quality of the community. Because most of the jobs that are made in this country need a strong foundation of people, those jobs will follow people.
Wornell talked about the importance of quality of life in economic development.
There are eight different types of capital that deal with quality of life, including intellectual capital, which includes skills; human capital, which includes physical and mental health; social capital, which includes trust, relationships and networks; natural capital, such as lakes; and cultural capital, which includes places of cultural significance, beliefs and art and architecture, she said.
Every community has those types of capital and they come in different levels, she said, but every community has them.
When you look at the people who live in a community, community leaders need to look at the things they need to thrive. She said if a community increases its quality of life for its residents, they greatly increase the chance of attracting more people to the area.
She also suggested when doing this to bring in people in groups that are not heard from regularly, such as single parents. However, the population dynamic the community has is unique to that community, and bringing all those people together to react with one another creates Kosciusko County.
In order to increase quality of life in a community, it requires engagement from the community, Wornell said.
Wornell also said there are short- and long-term effects to making decisions.
To use examples, Worrell used her home state of Oregon. She said Oregon has a lot of natural resources, like the ocean, forest, mountains and desert. But they’re not natural resources in of itself, as there’s political capital when it comes to timber and social capital when it comes to things like hiking. Because everything is connected, she said the policies that are made have an important impact.
If you overlog, there are deforestation risks. However, if you underlog, there are risks as well. In underlogging, Wornell said data shows when the federal and state policies banned logging, in a lot of those communities poverty rates skyrocketed and educational rates plummeted. It has a negative effect on those communities.
She said it was very important to look at the long-term impact of things. She said people want a silver bullet in order to fix things, but suggested thinking of ways to mitigate the negative impacts of policies and decisions.
The event allows agricultural and other leaders to hear about community issues. The breakfast returned Tuesday after a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Emily Wornell, research assistant professor at the Indiana Communities Institute at Ball State University, said when people think about economic growth, they think about jobs.
Wornell said there are two different kinds of jobs: global and local. Global jobs can be done anywhere in the world like call centers and manufacturing. Local jobs require a large population center such as healthcare, financial services, local baristas, etc.
The problem with bringing in jobs is a lot of focus is on bringing in local jobs. However, Wornell said, “We’re not gaining any of those jobs,” and because those jobs are global, they’re going other places.
Another problem is the thought people follow jobs. In reality, she said, jobs follow people. People choose a place where they want to live based on the quality of the community. Because most of the jobs that are made in this country need a strong foundation of people, those jobs will follow people.
Wornell talked about the importance of quality of life in economic development.
There are eight different types of capital that deal with quality of life, including intellectual capital, which includes skills; human capital, which includes physical and mental health; social capital, which includes trust, relationships and networks; natural capital, such as lakes; and cultural capital, which includes places of cultural significance, beliefs and art and architecture, she said.
Every community has those types of capital and they come in different levels, she said, but every community has them.
When you look at the people who live in a community, community leaders need to look at the things they need to thrive. She said if a community increases its quality of life for its residents, they greatly increase the chance of attracting more people to the area.
She also suggested when doing this to bring in people in groups that are not heard from regularly, such as single parents. However, the population dynamic the community has is unique to that community, and bringing all those people together to react with one another creates Kosciusko County.
In order to increase quality of life in a community, it requires engagement from the community, Wornell said.
Wornell also said there are short- and long-term effects to making decisions.
To use examples, Worrell used her home state of Oregon. She said Oregon has a lot of natural resources, like the ocean, forest, mountains and desert. But they’re not natural resources in of itself, as there’s political capital when it comes to timber and social capital when it comes to things like hiking. Because everything is connected, she said the policies that are made have an important impact.
If you overlog, there are deforestation risks. However, if you underlog, there are risks as well. In underlogging, Wornell said data shows when the federal and state policies banned logging, in a lot of those communities poverty rates skyrocketed and educational rates plummeted. It has a negative effect on those communities.
She said it was very important to look at the long-term impact of things. She said people want a silver bullet in order to fix things, but suggested thinking of ways to mitigate the negative impacts of policies and decisions.
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