Pioneering SpiritAn open letter to Lin-Manuel Miranda on the last, best hope to save the republic
Sir, The hour grows late. The President asserts the right to govern by decree. Worse, the Congress has ceded its constitutional prerogatives, neglecting to protect its power of the purse and even the sanctity of its chambers from executive overreach. Charles I chuckles from the grave. In this dark and doom filled hour, one hope remains: the power of story, aided and abetted by unassailable songs stirring up this country’s frayed and nearly forgotten faith in this experiment in self-governance...
Pioneering SpiritApplied research questions on the past, present and near future of government operations
by Patrick Atwater
Pioneering SpiritIntroducing the California Alternative Transformation (CAT) principles for moar efficient, effective…
The Meme Lords are rallying, with the DOGE Techno King and his digital court scheming their next big gambit. The internet's good citizens face a choice: cheer from the sidelines or chart a better path. Let's talk CATs, not DOGE.From our AI Oracles: “Here’s an image of a regal Shiba Inu wielding a scepter and playfully smashing the Capitol.”Putting the future of American government in the hands of a self-styled “Techno-King” seems, uh, mildly antithetical to the spirit of 1776. Not to mention ...
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Pioneering SpiritCalifornia: Between Hype and Hysteria
Pioneering SpiritAn open letter to Lin-Manuel Miranda on the last, best hope to save the republic
Sir, The hour grows late. The President asserts the right to govern by decree. Worse, the Congress has ceded its constitutional prerogatives, neglecting to protect its power of the purse and even the sanctity of its chambers from executive overreach. Charles I chuckles from the grave. In this dark and doom filled hour, one hope remains: the power of story, aided and abetted by unassailable songs stirring up this country’s frayed and nearly forgotten faith in this experiment in self-governance...
Pioneering SpiritApplied research questions on the past, present and near future of government operations
by Patrick Atwater
Pioneering SpiritIntroducing the California Alternative Transformation (CAT) principles for moar efficient, effective…
The Meme Lords are rallying, with the DOGE Techno King and his digital court scheming their next big gambit. The internet's good citizens face a choice: cheer from the sidelines or chart a better path. Let's talk CATs, not DOGE.From our AI Oracles: “Here’s an image of a regal Shiba Inu wielding a scepter and playfully smashing the Capitol.”Putting the future of American government in the hands of a self-styled “Techno-King” seems, uh, mildly antithetical to the spirit of 1776. Not to mention ...
Since the dawn of the new millennium, California has increasingly been cast in two wildly different films.
In one, it is a smoldering dystopia. Broke. Burning. Unaffordable. Fleeing residents in rented U-Hauls headed for Texas.
In the other, it is a sun-drenched dreamscape. The birthplace of the internet. The laboratory of climate action. A place so dynamic it could stand alone as a nation state.
Both movies contain truth. Neither is the whole story.
If California were a country, it would rank among the world’s top economies, ahead of the United Kingdom and India in GDP, a global powerhouse of agriculture, technology, entertainment and higher education.
Still California's quality of life is most similar to Poland and early childhood education resembles Latvia, a former Soviet block country. Massachusetts by contrast has an education system that resembles Singapore.
Beyond the boosterism and doomer-ism, California is a real place with problems and opportunities. This year there is a Governor's race with the chance to make a dent in those enduring challenges.
In a past job, I helped develop the California Dream Index, "the most serious effort at quantifying... whether California is succeeding" per Joe Matthews. Since that's now a few years out of date, I had my ai assistant update that analysis to the latest below.
The results are humbling as they show how intractable many of California's challenges are. Governor Newsom entered office with a lot of energy and rhetoric about transformation.
Yet the last 8 years have really demonstrated the merits of Governor Brown's hard won wisdom. From his 2010 inaugural.
I have thought a lot about this and it strikes me that what we face together as Californians are not so much problems but rather conditions, life’s inherent difficulties. A problem can be solved or forgotten but a condition always remains. It remains to elicit the best from each of us and show us how we depend on one another and how we have to work together.
Since the dawn of the new millennium, California has increasingly been cast in two wildly different films.
In one, it is a smoldering dystopia. Broke. Burning. Unaffordable. Fleeing residents in rented U-Hauls headed for Texas.
In the other, it is a sun-drenched dreamscape. The birthplace of the internet. The laboratory of climate action. A place so dynamic it could stand alone as a nation state.
Both movies contain truth. Neither is the whole story.
If California were a country, it would rank among the world’s top economies, ahead of the United Kingdom and India in GDP, a global powerhouse of agriculture, technology, entertainment and higher education.
Still California's quality of life is most similar to Poland and early childhood education resembles Latvia, a former Soviet block country. Massachusetts by contrast has an education system that resembles Singapore.
Beyond the boosterism and doomer-ism, California is a real place with problems and opportunities. This year there is a Governor's race with the chance to make a dent in those enduring challenges.
In a past job, I helped develop the California Dream Index, "the most serious effort at quantifying... whether California is succeeding" per Joe Matthews. Since that's now a few years out of date, I had my ai assistant update that analysis to the latest below.
The results are humbling as they show how intractable many of California's challenges are. Governor Newsom entered office with a lot of energy and rhetoric about transformation.
Yet the last 8 years have really demonstrated the merits of Governor Brown's hard won wisdom. From his 2010 inaugural.
I have thought a lot about this and it strikes me that what we face together as Californians are not so much problems but rather conditions, life’s inherent difficulties. A problem can be solved or forgotten but a condition always remains. It remains to elicit the best from each of us and show us how we depend on one another and how we have to work together.
Governor Brown to his credit set clear achievable goals like balancing the state's budget and building up a sizeable reserve. California's rainy day fund had zero dollars in 2009-10 and there were whispers of the state becoming a territory again so it could declare bankruptcy (state's are barred from reneging on contracts by the US constitution).
Today there is another budget race and there is a lot of promises about addresses the affordability crisis, the housing crisis and many other of California's crises like its efforts at climate mitigation and adaptation.
How will this time be different? To quote California's once and future governor again, how might we "turn a breakdown into a breakthrough?"
Below is a very thorough analysis of the specific CA Dream Index measures courtesy of Claude code.
The California Dream Index (CDI) is a composite measure of access to opportunity developed by CA FWD. It aggregates 10 indicators spanning education, housing, infrastructure, environmental quality, and economic prosperity into a single view of how well the state is serving its residents.
This analysis examines statewide trends across the full 2010-2024 time series, with particular attention to changes during Governor Gavin Newsom's tenure (inaugurated January 7, 2019). Data is drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, the EPA's Air Quality System, the California Water Boards' HR2W system, and United Ways of California's Real Cost Measure.
Each year's ACS 5-year estimate is a rolling average over a 5-year window. The 2024 estimate covers 2020-2024. This smoothing dampens sharp changes and distributes the effects of any policy or event across multiple data years. It also means that COVID-19's impacts appear gradually across the 2020-2024 estimates rather than as a single shock.
Indicator | What It Measures | Data Source |
|---|---|---|
Post-Secondary Attainment | % with Associate's degree or higher | ACS (B15003) |
Early Childhood Education | % of 3-4 year olds enrolled in preschool | ACS (S1401) |
Broadband Availability | % with broadband internet access | ACS (B28002) |
Affordable Rent | % paying less than 30% of income on rent | ACS (DP04) |
Short Commutes | Mean travel time to work (lower is better) | ACS (S0801) |
Prosperous Neighborhoods | % in tracts with less than 20% poverty | ACS (S1701) |
Homeownership | % who own their primary residence | ACS (B25003) |
Cost of Living | % with income above real cost of living | United Ways RCM |
Drinking Water | % served by systems with no violations | CA Water Boards |
Air Quality | Median AQI across counties (lower = cleaner) | EPA AQS |
All 10 indicators plotted together reveal a mixed picture of California's trajectory. Some indicators show steady improvement, others have plateaued, and a few have been disrupted by COVID-19.
California's college attainment rate has been one of the clearest success stories, rising from 38.2% in 2012 to 45.0% in 2024. The pace of improvement has actually accelerated slightly during the Newsom era, gaining about 0.6 percentage points per year compared to 0.5 pre-Newsom.
Preschool enrollment is the starkest casualty of the pandemic era. After hovering near 50% for most of the 2010s, enrollment dropped sharply beginning with the 2020 ACS data (covering 2016-2020) and fell to 44.5% by 2024. This 5-percentage-point decline during the Newsom era contrasts with virtual stability in the prior period. The question now is whether the state's investments in universal transitional kindergarten can reverse this trajectory.
Broadband access (available in the ACS from 2017) has been the single fastest-improving indicator, climbing from 82.6% to 93.5%. The expansion has been steady across both eras, reflecting both market forces and public investment. The pandemic likely accelerated adoption as remote work and school made connectivity essential.
Rent affordability has been remarkably flat over the entire period, fluctuating narrowly between 43% and 46%. There's no meaningful trend in either direction. This is arguably one of the most stubborn challenges facing the state -- neither improving nor worsening despite significant policy attention to housing.
Mean commute times rose steadily from 26.9 minutes in 2010 to a peak of 29.8 minutes in 2019-2020, then reversed course. By 2024, commute times had fallen back to 28.7 minutes. The remote work revolution triggered by COVID-19 appears to have had a lasting structural effect on commuting patterns -- one of the few unambiguous improvements attributable to the pandemic era.
California's poverty rate (as measured by the ACS) declined from a peak of 16.4% in 2014 to 12.0% in 2024. Notably, the decline during the Newsom era (13.4% to 12.0%) has been slightly slower in annual terms than the pre-Newsom decline, though the rate was already falling from a higher base. Federal pandemic relief programs (stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment, child tax credit) likely contributed to the 2020-2021 figures.
Homeownership bottomed out around 54.1% in 2016 after a decade-long post-recession decline, then began a slow recovery. By 2024 it reached 55.9% -- still well below the 57.4% rate of 2010. The Newsom era has seen a slightly faster pace of recovery than the pre-Newsom period, though the gains are modest relative to the housing crisis narrative.
Air quality, measured by the EPA's county-level Median AQI, shows no clear long-term trend. Values bounce between the low-to-mid 40s and low 50s depending heavily on wildfire seasons. The best year on record (2019, median AQI 46.7) was followed by severe wildfire years in 2020 and 2021. By 2024, the median AQI was 47.9 -- slightly worse than 2019 but better than the wildfire-scarred years.
California's air quality story is really a tale of two geographies. The chart below shows dramatic differences between coastal counties (San Francisco, Santa Cruz) and inland agricultural and wildfire-prone areas (Fresno, Riverside, San Bernardino).
The percentage of water systems operating without violations has been high throughout the period (96-98%), with incremental improvement over time. The 2020 figure (98.1%) represents the strongest year in the dataset. This indicator reflects cumulative investment in water infrastructure and enforcement.
The Real Cost Measure data is only available for 2014-2017, showing the percentage of households with income above the real cost of living rising from 61.1% to 64.1%. This short window makes trend analysis difficult, but it captures a period of economic expansion.
The bar chart below compares the annualized rate of change for each indicator between the pre-Newsom (2010-2018) and Newsom (2019-2024) eras. Positive values indicate improvement (poverty and AQI are inverted so that positive = better).
Key takeaways from the era comparison:
Accelerated improvement: Post-secondary attainment, poverty reduction, homeownership, and drinking water quality all showed faster improvement during the Newsom era
Decelerated improvement: Broadband availability continued gaining but at a slower pace (the low-hanging fruit has been picked)
Reversed course: Early childhood education went from flat to sharply declining -- the single biggest regression
Essentially flat: Affordable rent barely moved in either era
Mixed signals: Air quality improved slightly faster in the Newsom era when measured as an annualized rate, though individual years are dominated by wildfire variability
The CDI tracks several indicators broken down by race and ethnicity. Homeownership is one of the starkest examples of persistent racial inequality in California.
In 2024, White Californians had a homeownership rate of 62.5%, compared to 35.7% for Black Californians -- a gap of nearly 27 percentage points. Hispanic/Latino households (46.0%) and Asian households (61.4%) fall in between.
The Newsom era has seen modest recovery across all groups. Black homeownership, after declining from 38.8% in 2010 to a nadir around 34.2% in 2016, has recovered to 35.7% -- still well below its 2010 level. The White-Black gap has narrowed slightly from its widest point but remains enormous.
The statewide numbers mask enormous variation across California's 58 counties. Post-secondary attainment illustrates this clearly.
The most educated counties (Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara) have attainment rates above 60%, while the least educated (Kings, Merced, Colusa) hover near 15-20%. This roughly 3:1 ratio between the highest and lowest counties underscores the geographic dimension of inequality in California.
During the Newsom era, the gains have been broadly distributed across counties, though the magnitude varies. Rural and agricultural counties generally started from a lower base and saw somewhat smaller absolute gains.
California's CERF (Community Economic Resilience Fund) Regions group counties into economic areas. The regional view shows a clear coastal-inland gradient in educational attainment.
The indexed chart below normalizes all indicators to their 2019 values (= 100), allowing us to compare recovery trajectories across different measures. Lines above 100 indicate improvement relative to 2019; lines below indicate regression.
The most striking features:
Broadband and post-secondary attainment surged well above their 2019 baselines and never looked back
Poverty rate (inverted: up = better) improved relative to 2019, though recent years suggest the improvement pace is leveling off
Commute times (inverted) improved sharply, reflecting structural changes in work patterns
Early childhood education dropped well below 2019 and shows no sign of recovery
Affordable rent and homeownership have hovered near their 2019 levels
Indicator | 2019 Value | Latest (2024) | Change | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Post-Secondary Attainment | 41.8% | 45.0% | +3.2 pp | Improved |
Early Childhood Education | 49.6% | 44.5% | -5.1 pp | Declined |
Broadband Availability | 86.7% | 93.5% | +6.8 pp | Improved |
Affordable Rent | 45.2% | 44.7% | -0.5 pp | Declined |
Short Commutes | 29.8 min | 28.7 min | -1.1 min | Improved |
Poverty Rate | 13.4% | 12.0% | -1.4 pp | Improved |
Homeownership | N/A* | 55.9% | -- | -- |
Air Quality (Median AQI) | 46.7 | 47.9 | +1.1 | Declined |
Drinking Water Quality | 96.8% | 98.1%** | +1.3 pp | Improved |
*2019 homeownership data had a timeout during collection; trend shows recovery from 2020-2024. **Drinking water latest available year is 2020.
Bottom line: Of the indicators with comparable 2019 and 2024 data, five improved, three declined. The gains were concentrated in education (post-secondary), infrastructure (broadband), and economic indicators (poverty, commute times). The declines were concentrated in early childhood education (the largest single regression), rent affordability (marginal), and air quality (weather-dependent). Housing remains the most resistant category to meaningful improvement.
ACS indicators (7 of 10): Pulled from the Census Bureau API at the state level. These are direct Census estimates, not population-weighted tract aggregations (as in the full CDI methodology).
Air Quality: County-level median AQI downloaded from EPA AQS annual summary files, averaged across California counties.
Drinking Water: Enforcement action records from the CA Water Boards HR2W system. Metric approximates the fraction of the state's ~7,400 water systems operating without violations in each year.
Cost of Living: From United Ways of California's Real Cost Measure dashboard. Only 2014-2017 data is available in the source file.
ACS 5-year estimates represent rolling averages, which smooth year-to-year variation but create lag in reflecting current conditions.
Newsom era is defined as 2019-2024, corresponding to his inauguration in January 2019.
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2010-2024)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Air Quality System (AQS) Annual Summary Data
California State Water Resources Control Board, HR2W Drinking Water System Data
United Ways of California, Real Cost Measure Dashboard
Analysis by Claude Code using the California Dream Index framework. Data current through ACS 2024 5-year estimates (released January 2026).
Governor Brown to his credit set clear achievable goals like balancing the state's budget and building up a sizeable reserve. California's rainy day fund had zero dollars in 2009-10 and there were whispers of the state becoming a territory again so it could declare bankruptcy (state's are barred from reneging on contracts by the US constitution).
Today there is another budget race and there is a lot of promises about addresses the affordability crisis, the housing crisis and many other of California's crises like its efforts at climate mitigation and adaptation.
How will this time be different? To quote California's once and future governor again, how might we "turn a breakdown into a breakthrough?"
Below is a very thorough analysis of the specific CA Dream Index measures courtesy of Claude code.
The California Dream Index (CDI) is a composite measure of access to opportunity developed by CA FWD. It aggregates 10 indicators spanning education, housing, infrastructure, environmental quality, and economic prosperity into a single view of how well the state is serving its residents.
This analysis examines statewide trends across the full 2010-2024 time series, with particular attention to changes during Governor Gavin Newsom's tenure (inaugurated January 7, 2019). Data is drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, the EPA's Air Quality System, the California Water Boards' HR2W system, and United Ways of California's Real Cost Measure.
Each year's ACS 5-year estimate is a rolling average over a 5-year window. The 2024 estimate covers 2020-2024. This smoothing dampens sharp changes and distributes the effects of any policy or event across multiple data years. It also means that COVID-19's impacts appear gradually across the 2020-2024 estimates rather than as a single shock.
Indicator | What It Measures | Data Source |
|---|---|---|
Post-Secondary Attainment | % with Associate's degree or higher | ACS (B15003) |
Early Childhood Education | % of 3-4 year olds enrolled in preschool | ACS (S1401) |
Broadband Availability | % with broadband internet access | ACS (B28002) |
Affordable Rent | % paying less than 30% of income on rent | ACS (DP04) |
Short Commutes | Mean travel time to work (lower is better) | ACS (S0801) |
Prosperous Neighborhoods | % in tracts with less than 20% poverty | ACS (S1701) |
Homeownership | % who own their primary residence | ACS (B25003) |
Cost of Living | % with income above real cost of living | United Ways RCM |
Drinking Water | % served by systems with no violations | CA Water Boards |
Air Quality | Median AQI across counties (lower = cleaner) | EPA AQS |
All 10 indicators plotted together reveal a mixed picture of California's trajectory. Some indicators show steady improvement, others have plateaued, and a few have been disrupted by COVID-19.
California's college attainment rate has been one of the clearest success stories, rising from 38.2% in 2012 to 45.0% in 2024. The pace of improvement has actually accelerated slightly during the Newsom era, gaining about 0.6 percentage points per year compared to 0.5 pre-Newsom.
Preschool enrollment is the starkest casualty of the pandemic era. After hovering near 50% for most of the 2010s, enrollment dropped sharply beginning with the 2020 ACS data (covering 2016-2020) and fell to 44.5% by 2024. This 5-percentage-point decline during the Newsom era contrasts with virtual stability in the prior period. The question now is whether the state's investments in universal transitional kindergarten can reverse this trajectory.
Broadband access (available in the ACS from 2017) has been the single fastest-improving indicator, climbing from 82.6% to 93.5%. The expansion has been steady across both eras, reflecting both market forces and public investment. The pandemic likely accelerated adoption as remote work and school made connectivity essential.
Rent affordability has been remarkably flat over the entire period, fluctuating narrowly between 43% and 46%. There's no meaningful trend in either direction. This is arguably one of the most stubborn challenges facing the state -- neither improving nor worsening despite significant policy attention to housing.
Mean commute times rose steadily from 26.9 minutes in 2010 to a peak of 29.8 minutes in 2019-2020, then reversed course. By 2024, commute times had fallen back to 28.7 minutes. The remote work revolution triggered by COVID-19 appears to have had a lasting structural effect on commuting patterns -- one of the few unambiguous improvements attributable to the pandemic era.
California's poverty rate (as measured by the ACS) declined from a peak of 16.4% in 2014 to 12.0% in 2024. Notably, the decline during the Newsom era (13.4% to 12.0%) has been slightly slower in annual terms than the pre-Newsom decline, though the rate was already falling from a higher base. Federal pandemic relief programs (stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment, child tax credit) likely contributed to the 2020-2021 figures.
Homeownership bottomed out around 54.1% in 2016 after a decade-long post-recession decline, then began a slow recovery. By 2024 it reached 55.9% -- still well below the 57.4% rate of 2010. The Newsom era has seen a slightly faster pace of recovery than the pre-Newsom period, though the gains are modest relative to the housing crisis narrative.
Air quality, measured by the EPA's county-level Median AQI, shows no clear long-term trend. Values bounce between the low-to-mid 40s and low 50s depending heavily on wildfire seasons. The best year on record (2019, median AQI 46.7) was followed by severe wildfire years in 2020 and 2021. By 2024, the median AQI was 47.9 -- slightly worse than 2019 but better than the wildfire-scarred years.
California's air quality story is really a tale of two geographies. The chart below shows dramatic differences between coastal counties (San Francisco, Santa Cruz) and inland agricultural and wildfire-prone areas (Fresno, Riverside, San Bernardino).
The percentage of water systems operating without violations has been high throughout the period (96-98%), with incremental improvement over time. The 2020 figure (98.1%) represents the strongest year in the dataset. This indicator reflects cumulative investment in water infrastructure and enforcement.
The Real Cost Measure data is only available for 2014-2017, showing the percentage of households with income above the real cost of living rising from 61.1% to 64.1%. This short window makes trend analysis difficult, but it captures a period of economic expansion.
The bar chart below compares the annualized rate of change for each indicator between the pre-Newsom (2010-2018) and Newsom (2019-2024) eras. Positive values indicate improvement (poverty and AQI are inverted so that positive = better).
Key takeaways from the era comparison:
Accelerated improvement: Post-secondary attainment, poverty reduction, homeownership, and drinking water quality all showed faster improvement during the Newsom era
Decelerated improvement: Broadband availability continued gaining but at a slower pace (the low-hanging fruit has been picked)
Reversed course: Early childhood education went from flat to sharply declining -- the single biggest regression
Essentially flat: Affordable rent barely moved in either era
Mixed signals: Air quality improved slightly faster in the Newsom era when measured as an annualized rate, though individual years are dominated by wildfire variability
The CDI tracks several indicators broken down by race and ethnicity. Homeownership is one of the starkest examples of persistent racial inequality in California.
In 2024, White Californians had a homeownership rate of 62.5%, compared to 35.7% for Black Californians -- a gap of nearly 27 percentage points. Hispanic/Latino households (46.0%) and Asian households (61.4%) fall in between.
The Newsom era has seen modest recovery across all groups. Black homeownership, after declining from 38.8% in 2010 to a nadir around 34.2% in 2016, has recovered to 35.7% -- still well below its 2010 level. The White-Black gap has narrowed slightly from its widest point but remains enormous.
The statewide numbers mask enormous variation across California's 58 counties. Post-secondary attainment illustrates this clearly.
The most educated counties (Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara) have attainment rates above 60%, while the least educated (Kings, Merced, Colusa) hover near 15-20%. This roughly 3:1 ratio between the highest and lowest counties underscores the geographic dimension of inequality in California.
During the Newsom era, the gains have been broadly distributed across counties, though the magnitude varies. Rural and agricultural counties generally started from a lower base and saw somewhat smaller absolute gains.
California's CERF (Community Economic Resilience Fund) Regions group counties into economic areas. The regional view shows a clear coastal-inland gradient in educational attainment.
The indexed chart below normalizes all indicators to their 2019 values (= 100), allowing us to compare recovery trajectories across different measures. Lines above 100 indicate improvement relative to 2019; lines below indicate regression.
The most striking features:
Broadband and post-secondary attainment surged well above their 2019 baselines and never looked back
Poverty rate (inverted: up = better) improved relative to 2019, though recent years suggest the improvement pace is leveling off
Commute times (inverted) improved sharply, reflecting structural changes in work patterns
Early childhood education dropped well below 2019 and shows no sign of recovery
Affordable rent and homeownership have hovered near their 2019 levels
Indicator | 2019 Value | Latest (2024) | Change | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Post-Secondary Attainment | 41.8% | 45.0% | +3.2 pp | Improved |
Early Childhood Education | 49.6% | 44.5% | -5.1 pp | Declined |
Broadband Availability | 86.7% | 93.5% | +6.8 pp | Improved |
Affordable Rent | 45.2% | 44.7% | -0.5 pp | Declined |
Short Commutes | 29.8 min | 28.7 min | -1.1 min | Improved |
Poverty Rate | 13.4% | 12.0% | -1.4 pp | Improved |
Homeownership | N/A* | 55.9% | -- | -- |
Air Quality (Median AQI) | 46.7 | 47.9 | +1.1 | Declined |
Drinking Water Quality | 96.8% | 98.1%** | +1.3 pp | Improved |
*2019 homeownership data had a timeout during collection; trend shows recovery from 2020-2024. **Drinking water latest available year is 2020.
Bottom line: Of the indicators with comparable 2019 and 2024 data, five improved, three declined. The gains were concentrated in education (post-secondary), infrastructure (broadband), and economic indicators (poverty, commute times). The declines were concentrated in early childhood education (the largest single regression), rent affordability (marginal), and air quality (weather-dependent). Housing remains the most resistant category to meaningful improvement.
ACS indicators (7 of 10): Pulled from the Census Bureau API at the state level. These are direct Census estimates, not population-weighted tract aggregations (as in the full CDI methodology).
Air Quality: County-level median AQI downloaded from EPA AQS annual summary files, averaged across California counties.
Drinking Water: Enforcement action records from the CA Water Boards HR2W system. Metric approximates the fraction of the state's ~7,400 water systems operating without violations in each year.
Cost of Living: From United Ways of California's Real Cost Measure dashboard. Only 2014-2017 data is available in the source file.
ACS 5-year estimates represent rolling averages, which smooth year-to-year variation but create lag in reflecting current conditions.
Newsom era is defined as 2019-2024, corresponding to his inauguration in January 2019.
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2010-2024)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Air Quality System (AQS) Annual Summary Data
California State Water Resources Control Board, HR2W Drinking Water System Data
United Ways of California, Real Cost Measure Dashboard
Analysis by Claude Code using the California Dream Index framework. Data current through ACS 2024 5-year estimates (released January 2026).
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