This study analyzed the impact of diseases of despair on mortality within the Appalachian Region, focusing on mortality from three main causes: alcohol, prescription drug, and illegal drug overdose; suicide; and alcoholic liver disease/cirrhosis of the liver. It served as an update to ARC reports from 2017 and 2020…

This report presents findings from an evaluation of ARC’s education and workforce development projects that closed between 2015 and 2019, representing 383 grantees and more than $62,500,000 of ARC investment. By the end of the grant period, 337,405 individual beneficiaries had been served. At the time of the follow-up survey,…

This report presents a study to evaluate trends and impacts of investments in the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Local Access Road (LAR) Program using available project data and surveys conducted in this study covering the projects completed from 2001 through 2020. Information about 135 federally funded LAR projects was obtained from…

This study examines state- and county-level data for the 13 Appalachian states from the 2016-2020 American Community Survey (ACS) and from U.S. Census Bureau population estimates on topics including population, age, race and ethnicity, housing occupancy and tenure, education, labor force, employment and unemployment, income and poverty, health insurance coverage,…

The Agriculture and Local Food Economies in the Appalachian Region report examines agricultural activity and local food systems throughout the Appalachian Region. Based largely on data from the Census of Agriculture, it provides a quantitative overview of activity taking place within Appalachia—how it compares to the United States as…