Friday, July 13, 2012

A catalogue of each state's poorest county; most are rural

MSNBC recently published this feature, a compilation of the poorest county in each state.  Not surprisingly, most such counties are rural.  Some exceptions to that rule are Fresno County in California, Wyandotte County in Kansas, and Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania.

On the more rural end of the spectrum, the poorest county in each of three states is in the four corners area of the Southwest:  Apache County in Arizona (population:  72,401; poverty rate:  34.4%), San Juan County in Utah (population 14,825; poverty rate: 25.8%), and McKinley County in New Mexico (population:  73,664; poverty rate 33.4%).  McKinley County is not literally where the corners of the four states meet; it is just south of San Juan County, which does is literally at that corner.  All of these counties are nonmetropolitan, and this area is dominated by an American Indian population.  The other county at the four corners is Montezuma County, Colorado, where the population is just over 25,000, and the poverty rate is 17.6%.

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