OMAHA — After years of talk, concepts and controversy, creation of a northeast Omaha industrial business park reached a major milestone.

Revealed Thursday: The team that in early 2024 was awarded a $90 million state grant to develop shovel-ready property for manufacturers, distributors and other employers to build on has officially bought two sites at a combined price tag of nearly $30 million.

Next steps include recruitment efforts by the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce to secure tenants that can bring jobs and economic bustle to the properties.

When economists track inequality, they typically focus on income and spending.

But a significant share of the services that families actually consume – meals cooked at home, child care, housecleaning and lawn mowing – is produced by unpaid labor that never appears in these conventional measures.

As economists who study caregiving and inequality, we wanted to know whether accounting for unpaid work at home might change our understanding of inequality in American living standards – the gap between what richer and poorer Americans can actually afford to consume.