Research libraryEconomic resilience
Scenario & cascade tools
Move a lever. Watch the grade move.
Pick any county, adjust the structural levers policy can influence — or dial a labor-market shock and watch it cascade through income, poverty and program enrollment — and see the grade recompute live.
Scenario & Cascade ToolsAug 27, 2026
Two tools
Levers, or a shock.
12
structural levers in the scenario tool
1
unemployment shock in the cascade model, propagated through four programs
The cascade
Unemployment → income → poverty → programs.
Cross-county linkages estimated by OLS (R²)
Strong
SNAP ~ poverty + income
0.75
Poverty ~ unemployment + income
0.70
Medicaid ~ poverty + income
0.65
Weak
Income ~ unemployment
0.17
TANF ~ poverty
0.13
SSI ~ poverty
0.09
How this is calculated, and what it does not say›
Recovery-dynamics dimensions are held fixed in the scenario tool; only structural levers move. The cascade recomputes the grade with all affected indicators moving together.
Scenario tool
Cascade model
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). Scenario & Cascade Tools. Alt30. https://base.alt-30.com/reports/scenario-tool
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