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Methods note
We let the data try to pick the weights. It couldn't beat judgment.
Fitting dimension weights to COVID-era outcomes across 3,080 counties produced weights no more predictive out of sample than the ones we chose — and far less stable.
Choosing the Weights: an Empirical CheckSep 10, 2026United StatesPublished
Chosen vs. fitted
The data wanted housing and diversification. We weight program reliance.
Dimension weight, share of composite (six structural dimensions)
Chosen (renormalized)
Economic diversification
19%
Employment
19%
Income & poverty
19%
Program reliance
25%
Human capital
9%
Housing
9%
Empirical fit, full sample
Economic diversification
28%
Employment
18%
Income & poverty
5%
Program reliance
16%
Human capital
11%
Housing
22%
Stability
The fitted weights move a lot between folds.
Standard deviation of each fitted weight across cross-validation folds, in percentage points. A weight that swings by 10 points is not a weight, it is noise.
- 1Economic diversification10
- 2Income & poverty9
- 3Program reliance6
- 4Housing3
- 5Human capital3
- 6Employment2
Out of sample
Neither set predicts the COVID unemployment spike.
Spearman correlation between composite and 2020 unemployment spike, held-out folds. All near zero.
0.036
chosen weights
0.014
empirically fitted weights
0.015
equal weights
How this is calculated, and what it does not say›
Six leakage-free structural dimensions; recovery_dynamics excluded. One shock only — evidence, not yet grounds to change the index.
The honest conclusion: one shock cannot set the weights. A second, conventional recession in the data would; until then the weights stay a disclosed judgment with a published sensitivity test.
Dig deeper
Data in this edition
See the report's methodology section.
Sources carry different vintages and lags by design and are never combined inside one figure. The write-up's caveats section says what the index does and does not claim.
Cite as
Alt30 (2026). Choosing the Weights: an Empirical Check, Methods note (v1.0.0). Alt30. https://base.alt-30.com/reports/eri-weights-note
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