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.

structural levers in the scenario tool

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

Cross-sectional associations overstate short-run causal effects: directional, not a forecast.

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

Open scenario tool full screen

Cascade model

Open cascade model full screen

Dig deeper

Exposure report

Client-ready county shock deliverable, brandable

National report

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

Alt-30 (2026). Scenario & Cascade Tools. Alt-30. https://portal.alt-30.com/reports/scenario-tool