Manchester area scores very high on the Opportunity Index, with some caveats
Screenshot of Overall Score Map from Washtenaw County’s Office of Community & Economic Development 2025 Opportunity Index.
by Sara Swanson
In March, the Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development (OCED) launched the 2025 Opportunity Index, which uses current data to measure the access to opportunity across the county, along with an interactive map. Washtenaw, divided by census tracts, means the Manchester area has been separated out and can be assessed in comparison to the rest of the county.
Opportunity is defined as the ability of individuals to access fundamental resources such as safe, affordable housing, high-quality education, well-paying jobs, and comprehensive healthcare. The Opportunity Index uses data from five different categories to measure opportunity: health, job access, education and training, economic well-being, and community engagement with the purpose of pinpointing areas with limited opportunity to help direct resources to those areas to foster greater equity for all residents of Washtenaw County.
In the big picture, the Manchester area has very high access to opportunity, as all areas outside of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti have high or very high access to opportunity. Areas with the least access to opportunity are all located on the eastern edge of the county, concentrated in the City of Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township, though not restricted to just the urban core of Ypsilanti.
However, the OCED states that being categorized as high or very high opportunity overall can hide underlying areas of vulnerability in the five categories that make up the Opportunity Index, and this is the case for the Manchester area. Zooming in and looking at the smaller picture, when compared to the other areas of very high opportunity, the Manchester area has issues related to blood pressure, obesity, vacant housing, and education.
The Manchester area is divided into two census tracts. The City of Manchester and Manchester Township is tract 4310. Sharon, Bridgewater, and Freedom townships are tract 4320.
Amanda C Nothaft, PhD, Director of Data and Analysis at Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan, the initiative that did the research for the OCED concours, stated, “While [tract 4310 and 4320] are both ‘very high opportunity areas,’ they show some vulnerability compared to other very high opportunity areas.”
Tract 4320 is near the cusp of high/low opportunity on the job access score, which Nothaft explained appears to be driven by low employment rates and adult educational attainment levels. She warned that there can be very different reasons behind the numbers, and that a low employment rate and adult educational attainment can be more reflections of who lives in the tract than an indicator of a lack of opportunity. She explained that the employment rates could be reflecting early retirements and stay-at-home moms, and that if residents opt to work in the trades, instead of participating in higher education, that would affect the adult educational attainment scores. She stated, “Overall, labor force participation is lower, but people have access to jobs (transportation access is high), and well-being is high, so it seems like this is a personal choice rather than a barrier.”
She also warned that when comparing these tracts to other very high opportunity tracts, avoid the comparisons to tracts in Ann Arbor as “Ann Arbor is just different from the rest of the county.”
What stands out most to Nothaft is tract 4310’s low education score, which she identifies as a weak spot. She explained, “The lower education score is driven by low preschool enrollment, 3rd-grade proficiency scores, and college readiness compared to tracts just to the north. This underscores the importance of supporting schools to ensure that opportunity can grow.”
Check out the 2025 Opportunity Index and the interactive map for yourself at https://www.washtenaw.org/4639/Opportunity-Index.
The Opportunity Index measures education and training using five measures: preschool enrollment, third-grade reading and math proficiency, college readiness in math and reading, chronic absenteeism among students, and the proportion of 16- to 19-year-olds not enrolled in school, commonly referred to as the dropout rate. These measures are calculated based on where students live, not where they attend school. Map from Washtenaw County’s Office of Community & Economic Development 2025 Opportunity Index.
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