Section 2: Our Vision for Inclusive Growth
This section explains what type of growth our theory of growth aims to realise.
Since 2018, the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) has been committed to inclusive growth, which guides its approach to decision-making. WMCA defines inclusive growth as:
A more deliberate and socially purposeful model of economic growth—measured not only by how fast or aggressive it is; but also, by how well it is created and shared across the whole population and place, and by the social and environmental outcomes it realises for our people.
This means the type of growth the WMCA is pursuing and the investments we make to realise it are ultimately geared towards realising growth for everyone. Our success metric for the theory of growth is to increase gross disposable household income (GDHI)—a widely-used measure of residents’ living standards—relative to the national average in all places across the West Midlands.
To realise this goal of higher living standards, our theory of growth aims to do two big things: increase the productivity of the region, and increase the number of people in well-paid, good quality jobs across the region. It matters less where in the region we increase productivity, only that residents from across the region are able to access the good jobs it leads to. Moreover, we aim to achieve these goals in a way that also allows us to deliver our ambition to become a net zero region by 2041.
Figure 4: How our Theory of Growth contributes towards a more inclusive economy
It is important to be clear about the economic outcomes our theory of growth aims to realise, because they affect which challenges and opportunities are prioritised and provide a framework for managing the trade-offs the region will need to make. This is because, whether we like it or not, there are tensions here, at least initially, given the limited resources available to us: balancing, sequencing and prioritising between, for example, investing in higher-level skills or addressing the drivers of social and economic disadvantage; building social housing or regenerating urban city centres; supporting businesses in our frontier and high-growth sectors, or in our foundational and everyday economy. Our theory of growth is premised on realising productivity and increasing access to well-paid, good-quality jobs, particularly from our most disadvantaged communities, as the foundation for the type of society we want the residents of the West Midlands and its future generations to be able to participate in. We think that these objectives complement and reinforce one another and that, in the long-term, this could be an asset.