Hey. Southerners on the whole may be poor, sick, and uneducated people, but their my poor, sick, and uneducated people, dagnabbit.

As a whole, household income in the south is about 88% of the rest of the country. In 1990, it was 85% of the rest of the country. In 1975, still 85% of the rest of the country. Since education, poverty, and health are second order effects of income, it's not surprising that the South still needs to catch up. And the coal plants have been around for ages, when the primary alternative to coal power in parts of the South was ... no power.

A bit misleading; a cluster of four non-southern states [PA, WV, OH and IN] accounts for 14 of the "dirty fifty," while the Old CSA plus KY account for 18. Given that the major correlate of dirtiness is the use of coal, that's not surprising.

As for the other stats, I'm with Beaudrot; I'm always nonplussed when "liberals" talk about this stuff. Is the point to make the South better, or simply to turn up your nose at it? Far more often than not it seems to be the latter. The region has long had, and continues to have, big problems--but most of what I read about southern issues here seems designed to justify the all-too-common-on-TAPPED "let's ignore 'em" line.

None of this offends me, even though I'm a Southerner, but apparently an unusually thick-skinned one (or at least not all that attached to my home region's culture). The trick is to make the point that quality-of-life measures are particularly poor in parts of the country that are both politically conservative and racially diverse-- i.e., the south-- without letting the discussion turn to natives' fury at having this truth pointed out, a reaction they've been practicing & perfecting for well over a century.

I'm always a little taken aback when I get that "native's fury" then, but I guess I should stop being surprised. I'm from the South and I point out the above facts not to make fun of the South, but to imply "hey this is pretty bad, how about we pay attention to it."

Oh I agree it's pretty bad ... I was mostly trying to point out that the root cause is the long-term gap between living standards in the South and the rest of the country. Things like health and education seem less important when living standards are lower and you have to raise them ... you'll gladly accept a coal plant near your house if they'll give you a full time job at $18/hour after working part time at Wal-Mart for two weeks.

It would be interesting if the statistics were controlled by race. I imagine that a good part of the disparity between North and South comes from the fact that the South has more rural dwellers and more blacks, who are disproportionately less affluent than urbanites and whites. Also, more blacks in the South live in rural areas -- a double whammy of poverty.

Nicholas,

It is silly to argue that the South has lower living standards when it is the only region in the country to have positive net domestic migration as this recent Census Bureau report shows.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p25-1135.pdf

All other regions (even the West) have negative net domestic migration because so many middle class people are leaving their regions for the South which offers lower taxes and cost of living. Would it make any sense for so many people to pick up and move to a region whre living standards were actually lower?

You forgot Virginia:

Children in poverty: 8th
Teen motherhood: 22nd
Infant mortality: 31st

On the whole, respectable numbers. Further evidence for the "Virginia is leaving the South" argument?

(You also left out Texas and Florida, but those are sui generis -- they might as well be different countries, or even planets.)

The South has still not recovered from the Civil War and the curse of slavery on both white and black.

RK: I had a longer version of this that I closed by accident. The short version is: lower state taxes and housing costs mean your money goes farther even if you take a pay cut; the decline of smalltown manufacturing in the Northeast and Midwest gives people a reason to leave; and air conditioning makes the South (and Southwest) a more pleasant place to live than in previous generations. And these are thirty year trends we're talking about.

The bottom line is that the South is a different country, at least economically (every region has its cultural quirks, and the South isn't really a uniform cultural block), and has been since at least the civil war as the rest of the country began to industralize. 75 years after the new deal, it's caught up on some measures (like income) but not on others (like poverty, health, pollution).

David`
When I see stats like these, my reaction isn't to think we ought to make the South better or to necessarily turn my nose up. My reaction is, however, to raise an eyebrow and roll my eyes whenever southern politicians start telling me what's good for the country.

Which is a problem, because Southern politicians wield a disproportionate amount of power ...

All true, and it's very revealing that this is the region that produced the modern GOP, and that the current GOP's primary domestic goal has been to make the rest of the country look more like the South, i.e., poor, backward, badly educated, but with a few very rich people who experience virtually no constraints on their behavior. I've usually described the GOP project as one of trying to turn the US into Brazil North, but saying they want to Southify us all is just as accurate (after all, it's pretty much the same thing).

Out of all the cliches one could use to summarize the South my experience tends to follow along the lines of:

"If you're not outraged you're not paying attention."

The problem is not that there's some huge disparaty between southern residents notions of morality and ethicality when compared with residents of other U.S. regions. (Well, at least not as much as assumed to be the case).

No,the reality happens to parallel another cliche. While we do have freedom of speech, there's very little freedom to be heard.

While many of us work diligently to change this situation, it is clearly the most fundamental problem. At least that's what this progressive Southerner believes.

I think the picture's a little complcated - while the rate of teen motherhood is higher in the South, in fact the largest number of teen Moms is... well, pretty much where you'd think: California, which is far and away worst in total numbers of teen Moms. I find the statistic and the question of its significance, curious. Are we clear on what's wrng with that number/rate, or what can be done to really change it? I'm not really that sure. It's easy to give the South a hard time, especially when you're a northerner; but numbers alone won't quite do it, and not dealing with the complexities of the south, and other regions, both good and bad, does a disservice as well.

I think the picture's a little complcated - while the rate of teen motherhood is higher in the South, in fact the largest number of teen Moms is... well, pretty much where you'd think: California, which is far and away worst in total numbers of teen Moms.

The total number of teen Moms is much less valuable as a measure of social dysfunction. The rate of teen pregnancy is what needs to be targeted. Areas with very high rates need intervention first. Presumably any program that worked there would also be effective in a large state like CA.