What's Wrong with the Rural South, Part 2

In the nation as a whole, 301 nonmetropolitan counties are persistently poor. Persistent poverty means at least 20 percent of a county's population lives in poverty as measured by the 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses and the 2007-11 American Community Survey. Almost all the persistently poor nonmetro counties are in the South. Here are the numbers by region...

252 in the South
29 in the Midwest
20 in the West
0 in the Northeast

Source: USDA Economic Research Service, Persistent-Poverty Counties Are Mostly Nonmetro, Generally Southern