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[quote=Anonymous]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/poverty-income-index-deep-disadvantage/674878/

Two Princeton authors and one from UM seek to answer this.

- Income is one vital indicator of well-being, but it is not the only one: Things like health outcomes and social mobility matter too. That’s why we should shift our focus from poverty to disadvantage. Disadvantage is a more useful term than poverty because we aren’t just talking about income—we’re trying to capture the complexity of a person’s life chances being hindered by multiple circumstances. Disadvantage is more accurate because it implies an injustice. People are being held back—unfairly.

- the places identified as those of greatest advantage—was also vital to our research. Once again, we were surprised by where the index took us. It was not Manhattan or tech-rich Seattle. Instead, the list pointed us to the upper Midwest: Minnesota, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Iowa. Overall, poverty rates in these places are very low, babies are born healthy, people live to a ripe old age, and a low-income child usually has a similar chance of making it into the middle class as any other kid.

- The lesson is that people seem to thrive—not always in high salaries but in health and life chances—when inequality is low; when landownership is widespread; when social connection is high; and when corruption and violence are rare. The social leveling that is characteristic of communities in the upper Midwest is more than just a quaint cultural feature. It is the foundation of a community’s well-being. Until these regions’ virtues are shared nationwide, poverty and disadvantage will continue to haunt America.[/quote]

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