EDA awarded more than $6.5 billion across 9,422 grants (including renewals and amendments) from 2010 to 2021, equaling an average of $543 million distributed through 785 grants each year. It awarded more than three-quarters of grant funds through two programs: Economic Adjustment Assistance and Public Works.

However, EDA awarded the most grants through the Planning program, with an average of 360 per year between 2010 and 2021. About half of all grants awarded over the period were Planning program grants.

EDA awarded the most funding through the Economic Adjustment Assistance program between 2010 and 2021, and the amount of funding differed significantly from year to year. EDA awarded $384 million in Economic Adjustment Assistance grants in 2010, but that number declined to a low of $69 million in 2014. In 2020, it rose to $1.2 billion. These fluctuations are attributable to differences in the amount of funding Congress appropriates for EDA each year. In 2020, EDA received $1.5 billion in supplemental funding under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to support communities as they weathered the COVID-19 pandemic.

Looking at the number of grants awarded over the same period, roughly half were Planning program grants. The number of such grants reached a high of 670 in 2020, when CARES Act funding allowed EDA to award noncompetitive grants to Economic Development Districts.

The average cost of a Public Works project was $3.5 million from 2010 to 2021, and EDA provided 45 percent of the funding ($1.6 million). The rest, $1.9 million, came from other local funding sources (called “leveraged funding”Leveraged funding refers to project funding provided by sources other than EDA. Many EDA grants require a local match.). Economic Adjustment Assistance projects were the next largest, averaging $2.3 million in total funding. Of that, 67 percent ($1.6 million) came from EDA.

The projects EDA funds generally fall into two categories: construction and nonconstruction.For example, construction projects could include developing new utility lines in a county. Nonconstruction projects could include providing funding to support a municipality’s disaster and resiliency planning efforts. We categorize construction projects as facilities, utilities, or transportation infrastructure projects. Construction projects received roughly two-thirds of all EDA funding from 2010 to 2021, or about $320 million annually. Nonconstruction projects received the remainder, about $223 million annually.

Within construction projects, facility projects received the most funding—$155 million a year, on average. That means about half of all construction funding went to facility projects.

Considering the annual average number of grants, nonconstruction projects received the vast majority (more than 80 percent). EDA awarded an average of 635 nonconstruction grants annually, compared with 150 construction grants. Among the 150 construction grants, most (71) went to facility projects.

The amount of funding from other local sources that complement EDA funding, called “leveraged funding,” differed across EDA project types from 2010 to 2021. On average, these sources provided slightly less than half the funding for projects.

Nonconstruction projects are less costly than construction projects, so they leveraged fewer local dollars and received smaller EDA grants. From 2010 to 2021, the average nonconstruction project cost $502,000, and EDA grants covered about 70 percent ($351,000). However, that average masks significant variation: nonconstruction project costs ranged from a low of $374,000 between 2010 and 2019 to a high of $883,000 in 2020 and 2021, when EDA received CARES Act funding. EDA grants covered 61 percent of such costs between 2010 and 2019 but covered 80 percent of such costs in 2020 and 2021.

In contrast, the typical construction project cost about eight times more than the average nonconstruction project, and EDA grants provided a smaller share of funding. Over the study period, the average construction project cost $3.9 million. Project costs remained relatively flat until 2020 and 2021, when they reached $4.2 million. EDA funds covered about 55 percent of the costs ($1.9 million) between 2010 and 2019 and 69 percent of such costs ($2.7 million) in 2020 and 2021.

The amount of funding EDA invested per capita varied widely in each state and across states from 2010 to 2021. Over that period, per capita EDA spending varied from a high of $170 in Alaska to a low of $10 in Maryland. EDA invested the most money per capita in states with relatively small populations, such as Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The US Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands territories also received considerable funding per capita.

Funding amounts also differed significantly at the county level. Among counties with more than 100,000 residents,We examined counties with more than 100,000 residents because smaller counties generally either have $0 per capita spending (because they haven’t received a grant) or have unusually high spending per capita because they have so few residents. Linn and Johnson Counties in Iowa received the highest total investment per capita from 2010 through 2021 ($479) and Jefferson County in Kentucky, Waukesha County in Wisconsin, and Pasco County in Florida received the least funding per capita ($0.34).

EDA also invested more per capita in Economic Development Districts (EDDs).EDDs are regional organizations, commonly made up of multiple counties, that promote collaboration toward economic growth in distressed regions. About 52 percent of the US population lives in an area with an EDD. Areas with EDDs received more than three times the amount of per capita funding and double the number of grants that areas without EDDs received. Seventy-one percent of the total amount EDA invested in projects and more than 77 percent of the grants EDA awarded went to areas covered by an EDD.

From 2010 to 2021, places that received EDA funding tended to have higher levels of need—such as higher poverty rates and lower median incomes—than areas that didn’t receive EDA funding.

EDA seeks to support communities experiencing economic distress, with higher poverty rates and lower median incomes. (In 2021, it implemented an equity investment priority to better serve traditionally underserved populations.) We find that its investments align with that mission when we look across the following characteristics:

• Income and poverty. Areas that received EDA investment had lower median incomes, higher unemployment rates, and higher poverty rates than national medians.

  The median income for the average county with an EDA project was $52,000, below the US median of $59,000. Unemployment rates were slightly higher in counties and zip code tabulation areas (ZCTAs)ZCTAs are geographic representations of zip codes (US Postal Service delivery routes) generated by the US Census Bureau. that received EDA investment (9.4 and 10.6 percent, compared with a national median of 9.3 percent). The average poverty rates in counties and ZCTAs that received EDA funding were slightly higher than the national poverty rate (17.4 and 21.9 percent, versus 14.9 percent).

• Economic opportunities. EDA investment tended to go to local areas with more private-sector jobs and firms per capita, instead of more residential areas.
• Housing markets. Counties and ZCTAs supported by EDA had median home values averaging roughly $185,000, or about 8 percent below the national average. Median rents in EDA counties and ZCTAs were 15 and 18 percent below the US average.
• Race and ethnicity. EDA investments do not appear to have been targeted by an area’s racial and ethnic makeup. For example, ZCTAs that received EDA investment had somewhat lower shares of residents who are non-Hispanic Asian and Hispanic or Latino and higher shares of residents who are non-Hispanic Black and white.
• Education level. The share of the population with a college degree was slightly lower than the national average (28.5 percent) in counties and ZCTAs that received EDA investment (24.6 and 25.3 percent).