2021 REPORT: ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF STATUS QUO INVESTMENT ACROSS INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS
Failure to Act: Economic Impacts of Status Quo Investment Across Infrastructure Systems quantifies how the persistent failure to invest in our aging infrastructure impacts the economy, including GDP, jobs, personal disposable income, and business sales. The electricity and water/wastewater reports (above) were conducted after this full economic study.
ASCE finds that with an increased investment of $281 billion a year — $5.48 more per household a day — the U.S. can eliminate this drag on the economy, protecting by 2039:
- $10 trillion in GDP, nearly half of the annual U.S. GDP in 2019
- More than $23 trillion in total output (primarily business sales)
- More than 3 million jobs in 2039, two times the number of Walmart employees in the U.S.
- More than $3,300 in a family’s annual disposable income each year from 2020 to 2039, which is over half of the average American’s household’s monthly expenditure of $5,102.
