Forgotten America Can Still Be Saved

It’s no secret that some parts of the U.S. have been lagging behind others economically. In the past, that wasn't the case. From 1840 through 1963, as economists Robert Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin found, poor states tended to catch up with richer ones, vindicating the predictions of economists. From 1963 through 1988, the economists found, the pattern weakened, but there was still some convergence going on.

But according to a new study by Ohio State’s Mark Partridge and Alexandra Tsvetkova presented at the American Economic Association meeting earlier this month, convergence actually stopped and went into reverse sometime between the 1970s and the 1990s. The disparities in state income levels are now substantially wider than they were four decades ago, while the differences between counties have increased by a modest amount.