The Finding
Of the 14 research reports released in 2025, there were a lot of key findings. The Utah Foundation’s Board of Directors selected the top 10. In 3rd place:
“Utah’s sub-index score for focus on future generations has declined by 60% over the past 12 years.”
The Details
The Utah Foundation’s Social Capital Index project is a series of reports that measure whether Utah is thriving in terms of its “social capital.” Put simply, social capital refers to the ways in which individuals can leverage connections between people and social networks for the benefit of themselves or their community. One of the seven project categories is a focus on future generations. The Utah Foundation uses four indicators to compare states in this sub-index category:
- Parks and recreation funding effort – Utah is the third highest in the nation
- Public school funding effort – Utah is the 13th lowest
- Birth rate – Utah has the highest rate in the nation
- Youth organization funding effort – Utah is the fifth lowest
Utah does very well on two measures but poorly on two others. This is shrinking the gap between Utah and the United States.
Utah’s focus on future generations still looks good when compared to other states. This is largely due to our high birth rate. That said, two-thirds of Utah’s 60% decline in its focus on future generations was driven by declining birthrates from 2013-2025.
The Background
Read more about this finding in its full report here.
And learn more about social capital here.
And here is the full Social Capital Index series.
Coming Up
Learn about the other nine top findings from 2025 in our Significant Statistics blog posts.
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