Income inequality and poverty used to be separate phenomena in America. Today, it’s a different story: More than forty percent of U.S. counties have high rates of both. Income inequality has grown dramatically in America since the early 1980s. This is associated with a myriad of bad things, from worse health and higher rates of violence to locking in disadvantage and limiting the ability to move up the economic ladder. But until recently, a county with higher inequality did not necessarily have a high concentration of poverty.
Today, 41 percent of U.S. counties suffer from high levels of combined poverty and income inequality, up from just 29 percent back in 1989. Worse, as the table below shows, just 28 percent of counties have low levels of poverty and low levels of inequality. In other words, more than 70 percent of counties have either high levels of inequality, high levels of poverty, or both.
Read more at: Inequality and Poverty Overlap In More U.S. Counties – CityLab
