October 21, 2010  

Poverty in the USA

No time for a real post, so I leave with this informative info graphic on the extent of poverty in the US:

Things haven’t changed much since the 19th century, assuming that one can use illiteracy as a proxy for poverty. The South and the lower parts of Texas and Arizona are still hotbeds of poverty and a lack of resources. Perhaps the trickle down economy just has yet to hit these places….

http://www.mint.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Mint_Poverty.swfBudget Planner – Mint.com

About Pete Larson

Researcher at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Lecturer in the University of Michigan School of Public Health and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I do epidemiology, public health, GIS, health disparities and environmental justice. I also do music and weird stuff.

6 responses to “Poverty in the USA”

  1. Kirkpad says :

    That’s quite the interesting graphic.

  2. TeacherPatti says :

    I’m really surprised that Wayne County (esp. Detroit) isn’t a darker shade of red. I’m also wondering what our current color would be re: illiteracy. I see many functionally illiterate people just about every day at school (bless them that they keep trying and keep coming to school though!)

  3. Pete Larson says :

    Yeah, I thought that, too. I would assume that Wayne would have a higher number of people living in poverty than the rest of the State, but maybe there isn’t any data on the poorest people there. I would bet that a lot of people in Wayne live in the shadows.

    If the Census in the 21st century were anything like the Census in 1870, that would be an easy question to answer. The federal government in the 19th century was really interested in solving these great public challenges and getting the country to progress. This required that they know something about people living in America. There are more than 100 questions in those census sheets, questions people would consider to be incredibly prying in 2010.

    So when fleabaggers tell you that they want to return the country to “how it used to be”, ask them if they’d be interested in expanding the census.

  4. TeacherPatti says :

    Good point, Pete. We have a very diverse population at my school and we had no fewer than 6 different community meetings to convince neighborhood folks to answer the census. I’m sure some folks still didn’t out of fear or something else.
    I’d like those f’in teabaggers to read the book that I read on kids in the pre-union Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, they’d probably be nodding their heads in agreement as they took a shit all over my union contract.

  5. Mark says :

    With some exceptions, it seems like the states with the most red districts are more likely to vote red.

  6. Pete Larson says :

    I would say that’s true.

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